Kevin Roden – 10.06.10

This is an update to our recent article on a rezoning proposal near the West Oak Historic District.

The night began with a feeling of inevitability.  It was clear that the council was under the impression that an amenable compromise had been forged between the applicant and the neighborhood.  Even council members who were previously opposed to the project assumed there was sufficient agreement to warrant a positive vote on the project.  This was an unfortunate misread on the part of the council, but the perception was quickly clarified when neighbors took to the microphone at last night’s city council meeting to continue their defense of this frequently embattled neighborhood.

The good citizens of the neighborhood were worn out by a process that seemed to favor the applicant, exasperated by an applicant whose sole means of garnering neighborhood support was through the purchase of their properties, and disturbed by a council who signaled from the start their intent to see that area “go commercial.”

But while they pressed on, the applicant, Mr. Berdy Tjandramulia, began to self-destruct…

At the end of the last council meeting, the council indicated that they wanted to be able to approve or deny a specific site plan for the property prior to any actual development.  The intent was to ensure that the development plans were appropriate and sensitive to the adjacent neighborhood.  The city planning and legal team suggested that the site plan should be approved by the council prior to the platting process.  The other option would be to have the platting process move forward prior to gaining council’s approval of the site plan.  Tjandramulia’s representative, Larry Reichhart, made it clear from the beginning of the meeting that his client was not in support of the city staff’s suggestion along these lines.  It was still early on in the discussions and perhaps the hope was that the council would be sensitive to this concern.

Following the public comments, which put to rest any confusion as to the neighborhood’s position, the council began their deliberations.  Mayor Mark Burroughs was the first to speak and discussed the inevitability of change, the difficulty of balancing the needs of neighborhood preservation and the allowance for transitions to new uses, and the inability of Bonnie Brae to support single family housing any longer.  Click here and fast forward to 4:40:35 to hear his thoughts.  Next up was councilman Dalton Gregory.  He had, in a previous meeting, seconded a motion by Jim Engelbrecht to deny the rezoning.  Gregory reflected upon his distaste for speculative zoning and the need of a homeowner to have the reasonable sense of protection that zoning statutes are meant to provide.  Click here and go to 4:45:23 for his remarks.  The anticipated vote tally was now 1-1, with five council members yet to chime in.

Councilman Chris Watts then joined the conversation.  I had mentioned in yesterday’s article that his position was the hardest to read – this is, in part, because he does not fall into the usual council camps.  One could argue that the at-large team of Burroughs, Kamp, and King generally share a common list of political leanings if only because their campaign literature in the last election contained a common set of high profile local supporters.  Engelbrecht and Gregory find themselves comfortable with countering the at-large camp and have found a certain kinship in fighting for key livibility issues in town.  Heggins is a bit of a wild card because her political philosophy is difficult to discern. But with one big exception (see her lone dissenting vote during the controversial Rayzor Ranch drilling case), she generally will vote with the majority.  Watts tends to approach the issues with diligence, creativity, and a leadership style that reminds more than one observer of former councilman Joe Mulroy (who left his seat last May due to term limits).

Watts brought up the issue of equity throughout this process – see is remarks at 4:40:05 here.  Reminding the council that the original proposal required a super majority in order to pass, Watts asked whether the use of money to buy the surrounding properties, and consequently the opposition, was something the council wanted to encourage.  While expressing his indecision on this issue, his argument for a just process had done its job: he called attention to Tjandramulia’s lack of neighborly virtues.  But he went further and maintained that any affirmative vote from him would have to contain the condition that a site plan must be approved prior to the platting process – the very thing Tjandramulia had said was unacceptable.

James King, perhaps sensing that the tide was turning against the proposal, jumped in with a motion to approve the rezoning with this added condition.  He may have calculated right that further discussion was not good news for the applicant – the one, two punch from Gregory and Watts would be difficult to counter rhetorically, especially since Engelbrecht had yet to chime in.  In fact, at this point, it was quite possible that the rezoning would be voted for by a close 4-3 or even 5-2 vote (with Engelbrecht, Gregory, and perhaps Watts voting in opposition). But, by including the condition of the site plan, King misjudged the reasonableness of the applicant.  For before his motion could be seconded, Larry Reichhart jumped up to announce Tjandramulia’s objections to the proposal as it now stood.

Tjandramulia had a chance to disprove Watts assessment of his activities among the neighborhood.  He was now put in a position to confirm or deny the suspicions of the neighbors that his recent flurry of property acquisition within the neighborhood was a sign that he intended to extend his development well down West Oak, even into the newly created historic district.  A reasonable man would have compromised at this point, if not for the sake of his reputation, for the sake of his project – he was on the verge of losing everything.  But what was on display was a Captain Ahab who was monomaniacally pursuing a large white whale down West Oak.

“He is now in opposition to his own proposal,” the Mayor announced with a mix of astonishment and dejection, before calling on a vote from Watts’ new motion to deny the project.  The council voted 6-1 to deny the rezoning request, meaning Tjandramulia will have to wait a full year before attempting his plan again.  Only James King kept up the fight by casting the lone dissenting vote.  Perhaps, like the reader of Moby Dick, King felt sorry watching the tragic fall of this tragic character.

The neighbors who have been fighting this issue for months should be commended.  But if you ask them, this is just one more in a series of fights that they have had to protect their neighborhood – and it is just one of many more fights to come.  For despite the elation that comes from the result of this particular issue, it was the applicant himself who lost a fight he was on track to win.  There are still disturbing ideologies present among this council which call for continued vigilance for the sake of the uniqueness of Denton.  For instance, consider the words of Mayor Burrough during last night’s meeting:

Cities change.  Streets change – look at Locust and Elm.  They are changing, they are becoming commercial.  It happens – you cannot stop that.

I am not sure what sort of theological or philosophical position accounts for such a view of the inevitable.  Perhaps the mayor dabbled in versions of fatalism while a young law student at UT and we are just now beginning to see the results of that exploration.  In any event, the view that city planning is subject to some undetermined, all-powerful, yet not necessarily beneficent,  invisible hand of fate is just downright disturbing, if not plain nonsense.