OUR VOICES: Zoning case another example of southern Dallas neglect

By Dr. Frederick Douglass Haynes III

It’s been almost 20 years since Friendship West Baptist Church moved to Wheatland Road just north of Interstate 20. That stretch of highway was mostly barren when we arrived, but the progress we’ve witnessed, and helped facilitate, has been inspiring. To our west is a booming retail center, which has provided much needed economic development. To the east is the Dallas County South Dallas Government Center, providing residents with the services they need in the community where they live.

Unfortunately, one of our neighbors has introduced a proposal that would be a major step back for all of the great work that’s been done over the past two decades.

A local development and real estate company is telling us and the city that it wants to introduce a distribution center to an 18-acre parcel of land on Wheatland Road, between Hampton and Polk in our south Oak Cliff community. The proposed truck yard development is totally incompatible with the economic and ecological health of the neighboring community and will be hazardous to the health of our residents.

There are millions of square feet of warehouse space on the southern side of Interstate 20, across the highway from our facility and others. But there are no similar uses in this part of the community on the north side of the freeway.

Speaking of the north side, I seriously doubt a project like this would be considered on the I-635 corridor, were it next to a church, across from a school, adjacent to a residential community, and abutting a highly trafficked government building.

I fully understand that it is a developer’s right to build what it wants on property it purchased in accordance with archaic zoning laws that have decimated southern Dallas.

The developer has the right to seek a return on its investment, but it’s not right to continue the harmful legacy of economic colonization that ranked Dallas dead last in the Urban Institute Study just a few years ago in terms of economic inclusion.

The city has the right to collect the tax dollars that would be received from a new warehouse, but it’s not right to expose Carter High School students to the befouled air from 18-wheelers.

In the book A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and its Assault on the American Mind, Dallas ranks No. 1 in asthma attacks experienced by students per year and lost school days per year because of natural gas pollution.

Now business interests want to position themselves across from a high school with 18-wheelers emitting toxins, where Carter students may well cry “We can’t breathe” if this proposal goes forward.

One of the residential communities that will be directly impacted is composed of single-family homes, many inhabited by senior citizens. A member of my church who lives in the community expressed her concerns for the safety of seniors who utilize the county center for services and who volunteer at Carter. Not only are they driving their cars on Wheatland Road, but many are on walkers, canes and scooters. Imagine them contending with the added traffic that would be brought to our community by a trucking center.

I was encouraged by the Racial Equity Plan passed by the Dallas City Council last year.

The plan put forth a focus by the City Manager’s office on reducing racial disparities across five key areas: infrastructure, public safety and wellness, housing, economic opportunity, and environmental justice. This proposed use fails the test in almost every way.

I’m making an appeal to our developer neighbors to exercise some corporate responsibility and “put the brakes on” their plans. I’m asking them to join with the community to re-imagine what can be done. Legally they have a right to build the truck yard, but morally it’s not right to harm a community they don’t live in solely in the name of a profit.

Frederick Douglass Haynes III is senior pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas. He wrote this for The Dallas Morning News.