let me hang in suspense
let me cry on your fence
before you go
before you go
before you go
:: Sarah Jaffe, “Before You Go”

Kevin Roden – 07.28.10

After dropping $260,000 in consulting fees to the outside firm of Jacobs Engineering Group, the city of Denton is now in the process of introducing the Downtown Implementation Plan to the public.  The plan, brought about in hopes of giving policy direction toward the implementation of the goals outlined in the Denton Master Plan, is comprehensive in scope – architectural standards, green space, parking, trash issues, zoning, bike paths, and sidewalks are all discussed.

While the plan has been developed to help realize an overall vision for the downtown area, Denton’s most precious gem, what is left out of the plan should worry us…

Remember what happened on Fry Street just a few years ago?  Over the years, the majority of the historic buildings that made up that area had been bought by a single owner, Curtis Loveless.  After 60 years of having the buildings in his family’s name, he was ready to sell – and there was a long line of deep pocketed developers ready to scoop up that prime real estate at the entrance to UNT’s campus of 35,000 students.  United Equities stepped in with bulldozers in the wings.  The community was outraged, but the city was caught off guard with no legal recourse to stop the destruction of this historically significant area.

It’s been over four years since Fry Street was set for razing and it appears the city has done absolutely nothing to prevent something similar from happening to other historic resources in town, including and especially the downtown area.  According to two city officials with in-depth knowledge of both zoning and preservation issues, there is nothing in the city’s toolbox to prevent historically significant buildings on and around the square from meeting the same fate as the buildings on Fry Street.  Even buildings designated as Historic Landmarks have little legal protection if the owner decides he wants to take the building down.  Landmark designation is purely owner-initiated – that same owner or subsequent owners can also initiate the removal of such protection, thus revealing a major hole in Denton’s preservation initiatives.  History, community benefit, and aesthetics must always take a back seat to a very unreflective interpretation of property rights, so we are told.

Without a corresponding preservation plan with teeth, this Downtown Implementation Plan, complete with its constant discussion of “new development,” only serves as a green light for ambitious, yet visionless and talentless developers to come in and start tearing things down.  With the fervor of a three year old boy going after his playmates stack of wooden blocks, these clumsy developers are already beginning to show their true colors.  As Denton RC’s Lowell Brown reported in this morning’s paper, “some developers said they worried proposed architectural standards and other code changes could drive up building costs and slow the city’s review process.”  Translation: “we lack creativity, we lack any sense of taste, and we lack even a basic sense of responsibility to our own community – let us do what we want.”

The Fry Street saga should have taught us that we must stop relying solely on the “invisible hand” of the market to guide the growth and development of our city.  That invisible hand once wanted to tear down the courthouse, it destroyed the soul of the last interesting edge of the UNT campus, and it tears down beautiful ranches and replaces them with gas wells and Walmarts.  We must teach our young entrepreneurs the historical lesson that historic preservation is a contributor, not a detractor, of local economic development.

Please read up on the Downtown Implementation Plan by going here. Then plan on attending one of the scheduled public meetings where this plan will be discussed and possibly adopted:

– July 28 at 6:30pm – public hearing at the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting (City Hall)

– Aug 17 at 6:30pm – public hearing at the City Council Meeting (City Hall)