Despite northeast Denton residents’ continued concerns, city moves forward with developer-friendly area plan

Residents and supporters from northeast Denton hosted a bike rally in September to protest further development of the neighborhood.
Juan Betancourt/DRC file photo
 

The Denton Planning & Zoning Commission has directed city staff to implement 23 strategies with some modifications for the Northeast Denton Small Area Plan. The decision came during a special-called work session Wednesday afternoon, and the City Council will discuss the plan early next year.

The strategies seem to offer ways for the city to preserve open space, offer economic sustainability and retain the rural feel of the area.

But still, it’s clear that development will be coming to northeast Denton if the City Council approves the final small-area plan in 2024.

The type of development and how it will unfold, though, is what city development services staff will determine, using the strategies presented Wednesday to P&Z commissioners.

According to Wednesday’s presentation, the new plan says it will promote conservation development patterns for all future residential developments in northeast Denton.

Link - Northeast Denton Area Plan

To offer what the city calls conservation development patterns, the small-area plan will seek to incentivize developers to take at least 30% of the buildable area of property not in the floodplain and dedicate it to open space.

The question is whether these conservation development patterns will look like “traditional development,” at 3.5 homes per acre and minimal open space, “conservation subdivision” development, at 6 homes per acre and 49% additional open space, or “density incentive” at 15 homes per acre and 80% open space.

P&Z commissioner Eric Pruett pointed out that the biggest change he noticed on the planning map of the northeast Denton area was the 1,000 acres dedicated to residential transition housing, which he said would result in about 3,000 homes.

Pruett recommended a higher percentage for open space, which, in turn, means higher-density housing to preserve a larger space.

“We started at 30% to keep the density lower,” Shai Roos, the city’s consultant, said Wednesday. “The more you want open space and [the more you need] higher density.”

“That is a trade-off,” Pruett replied.

Yet, a majority of residents from the Hartlee Field area in northeast Denton don’t want higher-density housing or subdivisions. Instead they want to preserve the area and stick with what the Denton 2040 Comprehensive Plan calls for, which is rural zoning for the area.

They’ve been attending council meetings since August, when a majority of City Council members gave direction for city staff to develop a plan that would bring higher-density residential and commercial development to the area.

Ahead of the meeting, northeast Denton community members sent a letter to P&Z commissioners, requesting that they postpone Wednesday’s special-called work session.

“The consultant’s proposal urbanizes an area that should remain natural & lightly populated for the sake of the sensitive watersheds & wildlife that inhabit this area,” they wrote in their “Community Request for New Area Plan for Northeast Denton” letter.

“It does not consider the ecological sensitivity of the area, the most environmentally important habitat & watershed in all North Texas, instead proposing to box in creeks & forests with dense zoning that will only benefit the developers who build there.

“The proposal also assumes that the community’s quality of life will be improved by a new shopping center & ignores the community’s true desire & right to a clean & healthy environment.”

In another document presented Wednesday, Ned Woodbridge from northeast Denton pointed out that the small area plan is supposed to “refine” the city’s 2040 plan with community input and a steering committee.

Woodbridge claimed that the “spirit and specific language of the comprehensive plan are being ignored and greatly changed in this proposed plan” while the vision statement initially outlined by the area plan’s steering committee has been overridden by the majority council’s direction to staff.

“Remember, the Northeast Denton area includes the most ecologically important watersheds in the entire DFW region, which character should be retained to as an asset to the community to support quality of life, mitigate flooding and the effects of global warming, and to enhance recreational opportunity in the City and region while preserving at least in one area of Denton the historic rural character of the land,” Woodbridge wrote in the letter.

“These goals are not met in this proposed Scenario, and such goals are significantly compromised thereby. The above goals have disappeared in this latest presentation.

“This plan should be rejected and sent back for rewrite to be closer to the Scenario 1 presented on August 1st.”

Instead, the plan presented Wednesday will be coming before the City Council early next year.

Correction

An earlier version of this story indicated city staff would be discussing the plan at the Nov. 14 work session. That presentation has been canceled.

CHRISTIAN McPHATE can be reached at 940-220-4299 and cmcphate@dentonrc.com.