>> Good afternoon and welcome to the City of Denton's Planning and Zoning Commission
meeting for Wednesday, February 21st, 2024.
This is a special called work session for us and with a quorum present I will call us
to order at 5.02 p.m.
We've got one item on our work session agenda and that is a 1A, PZ24025, receive a report,
hold a discussion, give staff direction regarding the existing conditions report for the Southeast
Denton Area Plan.
Hello, Mia.
>> Good evening, Chair, members of the Commission, Mia Hines, Senior Planner.
And as the caption stated, this is the existing conditions report for the Southeast Denton
Area Plan and I'll run through this as divided into several sections.
We'll talk a little bit about the background, how we got through this process, how we've
come through this process so far.
Just a little reminder of what our initial goals were when we set out to start this.
And then the existing conditions section is broken up into different categories,
people, housing, land use, mobility, and community engagement.
And so I'll go through the data points that we've collected and the things that we've learned within those sections.
And then at the end, if that's okay with you, Chair, I'll ask if there's any questions on that section and then we'll move on.
>> Yeah, I was just going to ask you if you'll divide it with that, with a pause like that, and then we can take questions and then continue on from there.
>> Good to know. >> We do have two commissioners who are going to have to leave a little bit early if we're not done by six, but
we'll just see where we're at then and let them part ways and we can carry on still.
We'll have a quorum even when that happens.
>> Okay. >> Okay, thank you.
>> All right, so just a reminder, the purpose of this area plan and what we seek to do within this process
is to identify those areas that are important to the residents and stakeholders within the Southeastern area for preserving the cultural character of that area.
We wanted to address the development pressures that are being felt within the area,
as well as the properties surrounding the area that might potentially impact the area.
Identify areas where change can occur for the advancement of the neighborhood and overall community, and
suggest ideas for future improvements related to transportation, housing, connectivity.
Those things that we, under the planning scope, are not controlled but influenced.
And then also make, I think that this all make recommendations for capital improvement projects and policy changes for future improvements.
The study area encompasses approximately 600 acres,
bordered by McKinney Street to the north, Bell Avenue to the, and Dallas Drive to the west.
Teasley Lane and Shady Oaks Drive to the south, Woodrow Lane to the east.
And if you notice, there is a darker boundary here,
which is representative of what is the Southeast Indian Area Plan core boundary.
And then the sort of dashed outline here is what we are considering the transition area,
where we will still consider different land use strategies and categories and things that could be implemented within those areas.
Because those areas per the residents of Southeast Denton could potentially,
development that occurs within those areas could potentially impact the residents within that core boundary.
So, so far we've done an existing conditions analysis, we've done several months of community engagement.
We've retooled a little bit there and we've, I think, presented some things at certain benchmark points to this commission.
Right now, we are at a point where we are ready to present recommendation strategies.
And at the end of this presentation, I'll go over the next steps.
As you all are maybe aware, there's a joint meeting scheduled and that's where we'll present that to this body as well as city council.
And then following this, we'll go back to the community, make sure we heard everything correctly for community validation.
And then step five is adoption, and then following that, of course, is the fun life long implementation of the Southeastern area plan.
So the past, we know that the residents of this area or
the residents of Southeast Denton were forced to relocate from President Quaker Town Park into the Southeast Denton area.
And today, a lot of those subdivisions still exist.
Goldman Hill, New Quaker, Freedman area, and this is just showing, giving you a general idea of which some of those subdivisions that currently exist within that area.
So getting started with the existing conditions, we'll start with people,
demographically speaking, what I want to note here is that as far as
the population and the median age of the population within Southeast Denton,
it's about the same comparable to what you see throughout the city of Denton and Denton County.
They're about roughly 32 years old for the median age, whereas city of Denton is median is 30.
The median household income is slightly less than what we see across the city of Denton at just over 59,000,
whereas the city of Denton is at about 65,000.
And another point regarding people, or one of the things that I wanted to point out is within Southeast Denton,
a large portion of the population is under the age of 39, so they're a part of that millennial or
Gen Y generation and the Gen Z generation, that encompasses, as you can see with the 28% here and the 32% here,
about 60% of the residents or people who live within Southeast Denton are that age.
So that's important, because we are planning for the future.
We are planning for, or trying to plan for, a community that they would want to stay a part of and be a part of.
And so their input and feedback has been important through this whole process.
One other interesting detail that we learned from the ACS estimates is that over,
since 2010 or between 2010 and 2021, Southeast Denton has experienced a negative 4% increase in population.
So a 4% decrease, whereas the rest of the city of Denton has experienced a 23% growth, and Denton County has almost tripled.
So that's, again, one of those things that we look at, one of those data points that we look at to see what may be the cause of this,
and what can we do in this area to reverse that number and help it grow.
As far as race distribution, we're about evenly split, one third, one third, one third with black, white, and Hispanic.
And then the map to the right of that shows the general distribution of where those
data points are, or where those people are living within the Southeastern area.
The employment and jobs was an interesting data point,
because the illustration of the graphic on the left represents jobs that are currently available,
not available, but jobs that currently exist in Southeast Denton, whether field positions or not.
Those are jobs that currently exist within Southeast Denton, whereas the graphic to the right
shows where the residents within Southeast Denton, what their careers are and what their specialties are.
So it's one of those interesting things to look at, because where we have, for example,
we have a large percent of public administration and retail jobs that currently exist within Southeast Denton.
But the residents that live in Southeast Denton, as far as their majority of them work elsewhere in education, healthcare, social services.
So it's, again, one of those data points where we look at, okay, what are the opportunities based on the residents that live here?
How can we bring either jobs or employment opportunities into the area, so that the residents that live in the area can continue to live there and
become a more of a work-live environment, or what are those
maybe skills that we need to pull from a population standpoint, or pull into Southeast Denton?
And what sort of markets are we a part of employment and job-wise?
And as far as population characteristics, the Esri Tapestry, or
Esri does this, delivers this information where it basically creates segments based on the way that people spend their money,
sort of their day-to-day, their hobbies and their day-to-day activities.
Segment one is represented by the blue color on your screen there on the map,
which is representative of racially diverse community, our population that spends most of their money carefully,
because they're raising families, they have service sector jobs, things like that.
Segment two is representative of an older suburban population,
typically homeowners, where they're spending majority of their money on home improvements,
gardening, philanthropy, and things of that, or most of their money and time on things of that nature.
And then segment three is representative of the younger generation, it's that area that's closer to the downtown.
They're working on their degrees, living in multi-family residences in that area and
are starting to learn a little bit more about their finances because of their age and just where they are in life.
So that concludes our existing conditions, the people portion.
Were there any questions or any-
>> Commissioners for discussion.
>> Thank you, Chair.
Just like we saw with Northeast Denary Plan, we kind of looked at these types of demographic changes.
We saw some historical changes over time that saw the amount of folks that were working specifically in agrarian jobs had decreased in Northeast Denton to have more diverse within job pieces there.
So that's kind of, I wanted to use that first to frame this question.
The Southeast Denton, from my understanding,
is probably one of the areas, small area plans that we needed the most because of fear of gentrification.
Have we seen, when you're looking at the ACS data from 2010 versus 2020, 2021,
did we see any other indicators or signifiers that maybe were showing maybe the fear that people exist in the community for gentrification into that area?
Is there anything we could point to?
Did the younger demographic, was that really a 2010 to 2021 increase?
Was there, and we saw population decrease, but are there anything that we saw in that analysis that kind of hinted towards the beginning of gentrification or change within there?
>> Yeah, so I know we could probably get some more detail if you're looking for a breakdown of the age difference,
or of the people that left, what percentage of what, we could do a comparison and get more details on that.
As far as just telling the reason that people left, or the reason that the population declined,
we kind of have to draw from several data sources to do that.
I don't think the numbers alone, it's a little bit difficult to tell, but do you have some advice?
>> Thanks, Mia.
The only other thing I was thinking, I was trying to think back from some of our conversations from the advisory group meeting.
And I don't think the data is really clearly indicating.
We know that there is a concern and fear amongst the community related to gentrification,
but I don't believe we have necessarily the data fully to support that or deny that.
So, but we can go back to our consultant team and just verify and follow up with the commission
if we find differently than what we're discussing this evening.
>> Cool, that's good.
>> Commissioner Villarreal.
>> Going back and jumping off that question, is the age bracket breakdown for Southeast that incomparable to the city as a whole?
I saw that JetX was marginally, you know, marginal compared to the other age groups.
>> No, I think the overall with the city of, compared to the city of Denton,
I remember that Southeast Denton is younger than what we have with the city of Denton, but I don't have that figure in front of me.
I'm sure that will probably be something that will touch on in our existing, the write up of the existing conditions report.
>> And I guess just to follow up on that, that was something I think that was a little surprising to our team, right?
Because many times when we think of Southeast Denton and we think of the persons that are engaged within the Southeast Denton community,
we typically are seeing the older populations.
But what we're seeing is the data is showing something much different.
The other thing that we were surprised with was the third to third to third, right?
That Mia presented, but that combined with the 60% under the age of 40,
I think that was something that we really saw very interesting because we haven't heard from that population group typically in some of our public engagement efforts.
And we even retooled and did some additional public engagement on the front end of this project to really try to tap into that particular set of age cohort, if you will.
So it's really made us focus on how we do our engagement and why it was really important to our consultant team also that we try and capture feedback from the younger generations within the project area.
And just following up on that, do we have the age breakdown broken down by racial or ethnic demographic?
I don't believe so, but if that's something you're interested in seeing.
Commissioner Thacker.
Thank you, Chair.
So I'm looking at slide 19, the population characteristics.
I know that in the report it said that a lot of this was pulled from the census.
Where were these, I guess, descriptions pulled from?
Or were they generated by the office?
Which one, though?
I'm sorry?
Under population characteristics?
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm just wondering, use traditional means of shopping and listening to music.
I didn't know where the descriptors-- where you drew those from.
Yeah, it's from Esri.
I believe that they are-- I guess you'd call them a mapping firm.
They're who are backing our GIS and all those tools.
Yeah, they come up with segments and cohorts and sort of have their definition for them based on different characteristics and what goes into that.
So like I said, it's what people tend to spend their money on.
It's information and research pulled from hobbies and daily activities and stuff like that.
OK, thank you.
This is something that we're seeing more and more with projects that we work on,
where our consultant teams provide us the support is these additional data sets and information that's out there to help better understand,
like Mia pointed out, spending habits of people or within certain populations, what are characteristics that are illustrative of how they live, if you will,
how they spend their money, what is a priority to them.
And it's interesting seeing this data being partnered with the typical traditional data,
like the demographic information, numbers and breakdown of ethnicities and things of that nature.
But it just it helps provide us a little bit of additional insight into the community as we work on projects similar to this.
So it's we find it kind of interesting in some of these three segments, if you will,
that are illustrated here do not necessarily surprise me knowing some of the existing housing that's within the area.
And I would say help support and align more with with the on the ground and what we witness out there in the field.
Mr. Smith, on this slide here, one of the questions I had popped up when you're talking,
do we have percentage of population in the in the area that's split up by segment?
I don't think I saw that that number when you're presenting earlier.
I do not.
I'm sure there is a way that we could get that to you.
We can talk about it later. Time I guess could send it out.
That's totally fine. I can definitely see the segment one is the larger land area, but is that also correlate with the larger population?
Right. Or what percentage of population is it?
We find out that segment three is, you know, makes up roughly 10 percent of the land area,
but makes up 20 percent of the population or segment one makes up 60 percent or 50 percent of the land area,
but makes up only 40 percent of the population there just to kind of help understand where populations are within that area.
That's a good point. I think if I was if I was to venture a guess with segment one, segment two,
just knowing that the subdivisions that are within there, they'd probably be about the same.
And then segment three is probably probably growing because of the development.
I know I see we'll probably see from the consultant when we do the joint meeting,
but I'm sure some of these pieces will be included in that as well, kind of like what we do in the northeastern area plan.
So that'd be a piece I think would be good to throw into their future presentations, discuss something that might be the best way to answer my question.
We don't have that data readily available. I don't need an email on it. That's what I'm saying.
Thanks. Commissioner Pruitt.
Thank you, Chair. Just a quick map geek question.
Your little dot plot of population density, is that ESRI data or is that from ACS?
I've just never seen a source for that, and that's very interesting to me.
This looks like it's from the five-year estimate, the ACS five-year estimate.
I didn't know that they had because that looks almost more specific than block group.
It's not. So it's not by parcel. I think it's by like concentration in an area.
And I think it's one one data is representative of a certain a certain fraction of the area.
But I think it's OK. Thanks. Well, and just to add to this slide here.
So in me and my apologies if I'm being repetitive.
But one of the things that was really interesting to our project team is the distribution of the different groups of people throughout the project area and not seeing concentrations of certain race and ethnicity within the project area.
So you're not seeing a cluster of blacks or a cluster of whites or a cluster of Hispanics, right?
You're seeing that distribution all throughout the entire project area.
So, you know, it's been interesting as we've worked on this project again through our public engagement efforts, looking at the data and seeing truly who is living within the southeast area and where that population distribution is happening.
And this was just another one of the the tools that our project team had used to be able to help illustrate that.
And because I know that's one thing that Mitchell actually pointed out and shy had pointed out for us.
Commissioner Cole. Thank you, Chair.
Just just to kind of ground us a little bit here, you know, I don't want to compare this to Northeast Denton or anywhere else.
The people of Northeast Denton weren't forced there by gunpoint and torch.
That's a fact. These people were.
So I think we need to just be just be aware of that and have some respect for that process, this process and understanding the history.
And I think so, let's not compare this.
This is Southeast Denton. This is not North Northeast Denton.
No, you're right. And so let's that is what we're talking about, what we're concentrating on for sure.
OK, yeah. Why don't we go to the next one, because I know we're getting laid there.
Right. OK, housing.
All right. So similarly with with housing, as far as properties located within Southeast and approximately one hundred and twenty one of those properties are commercial compared to six hundred and seventy eight residential and three hundred and six.
Vacant as far as residential, you are the residential breakdown of those residential properties, approximately two percent of the units are multifamily, whereas approximately seventy nine percent of them are single family units.
As far as occupancy versus vacant or occupied versus vacant households, we're seeing a split of about sixty six hundred and seventy three occupied versus thirty four vacant.
And as far as percentage of homeowner home ownership within Southeast and area, it's actually higher than what we see compared to what is within the city of Denton, as well as didn't county at sixty two percent compared to Denton's forty five and fifty five percent of homeowner owner occupied homes.
Housing snapshot snapshot. I think similarly here we see a Southeast didn't home values on average are lower than what we see across the city of Denton and didn't county.
One of the things I thought was interesting as a renter myself is that rent is approximately the same as rent payments are approximately the same as mortgage payments throughout Southeast and as well as the city of Denton.
So that may speak to maybe a difficulty in down payment down payments or some of those other expenses that come with home ownership where as opposed to monthly monthly payments of being able to stay where you where you where you live and then mortgage properties within Southeast Denton.
We are seeing fifty eight forty two split of properties with a mortgage versus properties that have been paid off as far as housing and age and value.
What you see here on the left is the map showing the resident the year that residential homes were built.
Of course we have a lot of those older subdivisions here within the Southeast in the area and then on the right we have the residential appraised value.
I think what I want what we wanted to show represent here is that it's kind of all over the place.
Of course the proximity matters when you're doing market assessments for properties but not necessarily is it the older the home the higher the price or the newer the home the higher the price or anything like that.
And they're kind of it's it's it's a very spectrum of both years built and appraised value.
So as community assets what we discovered with the residents of and constituents within this area have have told us and what we like I said on the ground have discovered.
These are the community assets. We have the parks there.
There are nine churches I believe identified on the map to your left.
The foundation of our history mural at on Robertson Street Fredmore High School and then there's there's the MLK Recreation Center as well as the American Legion Hall.
And then as far as other amenities within Southeast didn't and then proximity to things that residents use on a daily or semi regular basis grocery stores as we can see they're all located outside of our boundary currently convenience stores.
There's some a little closer within the or closer to the core and within the core.
And then again the American Legion Hall senior center is an amenity within the core of our boundary.
So that concludes our housing snapshots.
Any questions on that.
Commissioner Smith nature can go back to the first or second slide.
I had a question that I forgot about it and I realized I answered right. Writing stuff down. Oh yeah. That's what it was. Go back to the first slide. What is our percentage percentage and vacant parcels in residential use as a city.
Do we know that I do not know that I think I think the properties and properties in Southeast didn't number of properties.
That'd be hard to make comparison of just having that be a this area versus city doesn't have a percentage of vacant parcels would be interesting to have that in future presentations of what is that split of multifamily single family and the entire city compared to the entire city.
Just to see what that percentage is because I think it'd be it'd be it'd be I mean it's hard to talk about from the area plan perspective here.
It'd be interesting to see. I have no clue. But if for some reason we saw that the city as a whole was really only 12 percent vacant parcels versus 19 percent then I doubt it is. But you know something like that at least trying to see something within their how that compares.
Maybe even comparing it to other residential area planned areas it's like hey there's compared to other areas we've talked about in certain areas of town. This this this area has a lot of vacant parcels or has very few vacant parcels and that helps guide some of that conversation on what to do with the area plan moving forward because that's something to talk about.
Now you have to do growth. You don't really want to scrape and demolish and scrape. There's vacant parcels that could guide the discussion on that. But I mean can you go for two slides to so on that residential appraised value side of things.
Is that on parcel value by I know you got it from DCAD. So parcel value and was it was it in parcels with improvements only or was that including 20 percent of the residential use areas in there were vacant. So yeah all of the and we do get to vacancies here are a little bit more than definitely vacancies here later I believe.
It's more about there are there up to eighty four thousand and you see those little small black part you know parcels out there they're on that are are those just vacant lots are we including vacant lots in that and that coloring graph here.
I don't believe so. OK. So they these are these are lots with with improvements on them. So with improved structures houses on them.
OK. I'm trying to compare the two see if I can quickly you can see that that's I believe it is me if members are correctly it's existing improvements plus land value. We can double check and confirm but I'm I'm fairly certain that it is just looking at the numbers of the residential plots are vacant.
I would assume that the vacant plots are probably going to be eighty four thousand dollars and less. Would that skew our visual data on this page itself. If it's not if it's saying we're only looking at parcels with improvements on it parcels with a residential structure on it then great.
That helps us make sure we have the most accurate data. Hopefully my question and my point is being made here. It is and I believe this is I believe this is parcels with only improvement. OK. Improvements on it. Cool.
Any other questions regarding housing data at this point. OK. Thank you. OK. Land use existing land use conditions.
Here is the existing land use map. What we see is that there are quite a bit of resident there is quite a bit of residential within the core of the boundary and then some a little bit closer up to McKinney.
It is surrounded by industrial uses government facilities and commercial uses along the fringes of those major thoroughfares that are sort of serving as the boundary to our study area.
And one of that one of the things that that that's interesting to note is because we have those those residences sort of they're sort of tucked in to to the surrounding developments and it kind of kind of creates a
hard opportunities to make those connections to areas outside of our core boundary. As far as the open space we are we're looking at two hundred and twenty two acres approximately two hundred twenty two acres within this this area.
Residential land uses encompasses approximately one hundred and eighty three acres within this area or twenty seven percent and non-residential uses across encompasses approximately two hundred eighty three acres in this area.
As far as vacant land vacant land within southeast Denton again we're looking at vacant commercial land compared to vacant residential land and non-vacant non-agent not home site land.
Fifty five percent of vacant or vacant land is residential and then thirty two percent of vacant land is commercial.
This was an interesting breakdown. There are quite a bit of public owned facilities within the area sixty percent of which are developable forty percent of which are not developable.
And so that's a lot. Usually that that floodplain the creek area that's sort of running through there and then as far as privately owned land 14 percent of that is not available again because probably because of a floodplain or
different different issues that that are existing on those on those properties that make it difficult to develop as far as zoning that this body is very familiar with.
Majority of the properties within the southeast didn't area are zoned are shown here are zoned are for most of the residential subdivisions are within that zone.
There is an area with the R3 zoning and then there are MN and MD zoning.
So that's mixed use neighborhood that makes use downtown zoning's closer to the northwest portion of this area as you get closer into downtown.
And then light industrial zoning exists at the south and southeast of this area.
As far as parks and open space within this community we sort of ran through some of those amenities while we were going through our community assets portion just noting the parks in southeast didn't are awesome but there are opportunities for improvements.
The drainage and soil conditions for example are one some sidewalk connections could be improved accessibility could definitely be improved at some of these sites.
And so we wanted to take a make sure we had a full picture of those things.
And that concludes the land use portion.
Are there any questions on here?
>> Okay mobility per the Denton 2022 mobility plan.
The majority of the thoroughfares that's surround or make up the border of the core area of the Southeast Denton area plan project are existing secondary arterials.
There are several collectors that run through Southeast and again creating opportunities for
improvements to those are showing opportunities for improvements to those those streets and
connection points that could be made with outside of the core as well and then Dallas Drive is an existing primary arterial.
A roadway condition we have some images the top image there is of McKinney Street.
That was not fun to take standing on McKinney Street personally when I had to take that picture.
More Street and Lakey Street are there down to the at the bottom left hand corner and
then McKinney Street and Crawford or the intersection of McKinney Street and Crawford to the right of that.
This the graph or the map on the right shows traffic crash injuries collected.
Basically showing you at those some of those major intersections there is a higher concentration of
traffic injuries and the yellow dots are representative of by or
recorded by pedestrian crash injuries and so as you can see some of those occur along McKinney,
Long Bell, Dallas Drive there's there's definitely some some opportunities for improvement within those areas.
Bike and ped facilities within the area a lot of future for
the didn't 2022 mobility plan a lot of future
bike lanes future side path connections intent intentions for this area as well as the
existing Katie trail and the I'm sorry existing that trail along the railroad there and then the
future trails that are currently I believe in
conceptual design right now to connect this area to the area to the east via the Pecan Creek.
Bike and pedestrian facilities existing most of them through this site are classified as good or very good or fair.
Transit we know the DCT a station is located within this area and that is a service and opportunity that
or shows as a service and opportunity that could be taken advantage of and considered with this area plan process.
That concludes the section for mobility any comments questions on that part.
Commissioner Smith is it a fair assumption then by the data that we're seeing that
mobility to move in and out of this area is by bike and pedestrian movement right we know car
movement exists but bike and pedestrian movement that it's it's pretty low right now because I think
that some of the slides may look like it seemed like a lot of future side paths but there's not a
lot of existing side paths and there's one right in the heart of it I know on the edges there exists
some shared spaces shared shared streets but looks like there's only one main thoroughfare through the
heart of southeast and that it's shared so it's seems like it's pretty tough to move in and out
of that area is that a fair assumption how does that compare to other neighborhoods I mean is that
is that common in other neighborhoods where we don't have I'm thinking like my neighborhood
there are sections that have sidewalks there are sections that don't have sidewalks I think that's
a problem in that I think it's a problem in Denton right so is it is it a is it a problem in this area
or is that just a problem in Denton that we're facing we would look at any section that we get
into dense residential area there's not a lot of mobility to move in and out of neighborhood
freely within there so I would say it's it's a problem within Denton throughout this city and so
as you all have been involved in some of our past conversations as it relates to mobility you know
when we updated the mobility plan looking at complete streets looking at pedestrian bicycle
in addition to the vehicle mobility was important for our community and we are playing catch up in
our areas where we have newer development happening we have stronger development codes
that are in place that and we are able to take advantage of the development community providing
those improvements consistent with our long-range plans but we do have catch up work that we need
to do elsewhere within the older parts of the city especially that have already developed.
Commissioner Pruitt. Thank you chair.
So have there been discussions with stakeholders etc all the the outreach we've done specifically
on the the form and future of McKinney and South Bell Avenue and and what if you could try to
characterize how that's gone and what the visions are at this point I'd like to understand that more.
Yeah so we've we have asked the community and I'll get into in the community section I'll get into
the the visual preference survey that we've done what facilities they would like to see in general
and and and sort of tying that to the classification of those of those roadways we have gotten feedback
that you know bike facilities would be would be great sidewalks would be great and I think
it's a matter of of engineering that are doing a further analysis into that to see what would be
most appropriate. We're also working with the downtown Denton plan to see what their plans are
for McKinney and Bell to make sure that it's it's seamless and there's a there's a good transition
between those two. Okay yeah I mean when I look at long-term futures the the location and and
design of those right of ways really drives the type of activity that ends up happening and you
know I've heard everything on East McKinney there from you know hey this is on a road diet program
to go to three lanes to no we're going to widen it to five lanes and and similarly on Bell right
there's there's certainly a lot of activity on either side of Bell so you would expect more
people trying to filter through that corridor and then I think you know council gave direction to
to widen the intersection down at Eagle and Bell so that they could accommodate you know 50,000
cars a day eventually and so I think it's something that we really need to make sure
that we have the community's voice on so that the future of those corridors doesn't drive
the the future of the development of this area into a place where
we're not trying to push it from a area plan perspective. Does that make sense?
Yep.
Anybody else on this?
Okay on to our community engagement so though the data points that I've covered so far are
were collected again from survey census data estimates things of of that nature DCAD appraisal
district we have done like I said an extensive community engagement period we've held stakeholder
meetings where we asked the community to come to to one location a centralized location of course
we've met regularly with the steering committee we've gotten their feedback along the way making
sure that we're hearing what we hear from the community registers with the the members of the
steering committee who are some of them are long-term residents and stakeholders within
this area. We've held listening sessions so deeply deep like personal one on sessions rather where
the residents and stakeholders share their their stories and their dreams and their desires for
their area in the neighborhood. We've done intercept surveys or at in several pop-ups
like the MLK recreation center their after school program we were at the Juneteenth parade we've
been to Veronica's cafe several locations just sort of meeting the people where they are as
opposed to having them come to us. We've done a visioning workshop at the American Legion Center
we've had a several visual preference surveys as well where as a part of that that sort of
intercept survey makeup going to the people again asking them if we've if we've heard them correctly
and then at the very beginning of this we had a staff implementation workshop where we started with
technical staff and and asked what would be possible what would be impossible what falls
outside of of staff's authority and things of that nature. I won't go I just went into a lot
of detail on that so with the with the visioning workshop we did ask the these questions what do
you love about Southeast Denton we heard their the amenities that we brought up their green spaces
parks we did ask you know what do you dream or what are your dreams of Southeast Denton no
justification community market street light and shade community more community events within the
area what are the things that you care most about keeping within this area the parks the churches
those some of those items that are core to the Southeast Denton culture and what are those items
that you want to see removed the the cement plant or those industrial uses within that area the
pressure to increase density within the area the potholes so regular regular infrastructure maintenance
the prison facility the constant and road work improvements that are going on in the area as
well and we could do a better job as a city of communicating that and when that's when that's
taking place and updating people on those. As far as again just mapping areas of change and areas
of stability from the residents and the what we heard again that core those core residential
neighborhoods single-family residential subdivisions generally they want that area to stay the same
they're open to change in general around the in the areas that are represented in in in blue and
we did have an interesting discussion with our steering committee about this particular feedback
because areas of change is so broad but in general the the I think the focus with this question and
the answers that we received were the areas of stability or what's really important to me is
staying the same as the character of my neighborhood the character of those those subdivisions
and the areas that we're willing to see change or some of those basically the the heavy industrial
uses and the the the areas along the the fringe there. We did run that visual preference survey
where we asked about housing typologies and what the people what the residents or the stakeholders
within of the of the area would like to see. Those images on the left were the housing designs the
for single-family residential housing and sort of duplex situations. The images in the middle are
were there what they would like to see as far as increased density so multi-family designs and
things of that nature and then the images on the right there are what they would like to see as far
as commercial space and non-residential development within the area. So that concludes the community
engagement portion any questions or comments on that piece? If I could Mia just real quick could
you go back to the slide the the overarching themes? So Mia you did a great job of summarizing all of
the public engagement that we've done and I have to compliment Mia and Julie her her counterpart
with all of the work that's been done to really try and to receive the feedback from the community.
What I would really like to draw your attention to though is the graphic that's on the right hand
side so through all of our public engagement thus far these are the themes that are starting to
evolve and develop. I think Mia may have just kind of quickly brushed over this but I really want the
commission to focus in on these themes. Commissioner Cole to your point preserving Denton's history and
remembering the lessons of Quaker Town. We know that the community still feels the generational
trauma of the events of a hundred years ago and and even actions by the city more recently right
so it's but in working with the community you know we we understand that there is a need to make sure
that we remember the lessons of Quaker Town. Also there's a lot of emphasis on embracing the
culture that is there and remembering the culture and the events of the past. You know some of the
themes that have and you may have seen this in some past conversations we've had but some of the
themes that have evolved for example improving communication between the city and the neighborhood
is something that we're really committed to focusing on as we move forward. Part of this issue
though came about as I think associated with some of the challenges of the roads that were under
construction during the time period in which we were doing a lot of our public engagement
and so we worked with our capital projects team regarding communicating information out
regarding which roadways are going to be torn up and just you know the status and the length of the
project coupled that with improving an infrastructure you know some of the challenges that we've had
were there were a lot of questions regarding well you've rebuilt the streets why did we not build
sidewalks there you know part of it was the timing of the projects and if you recall we had talked
about some of that in the past it's it's you know when these projects to reconstruct the streets were
earmarked for funding several years ago it was looking at the improvements between
face of curb to face of curb it did not factor in sidewalk and mobility connections and improvements
in that nature so so hence why we we see some of that portraying within within the themes about
improving the the infrastructure again ending the the pattern of neglect and beginning to heal the
area that was an important theme that has come about again in relationship relationship to the
history we've had here creating standards for housing ensuring long-term affordability and
addressing concerns about displacement we know those concerns are very real and so we're working
with our project team about okay what are the strategies that that we can put in place and the
actions that we can take to be able to help address this concern within the community and when we have
our meeting on march 19th with city council and do that joint discussion this is where we will be
focusing on those strategies and those strategies come from these themes that are here so just
i would ask your you know your homework between now and then is is this especially look at these
themes that have evolved and keep that in mind and i think more importantly also the graphic
that's in the middle there so thank you my apologies i was going too fast i skipped over that piece
commissioner thank you chair um the steering committee you keep referring to who are the
members of that steering committee and how is that put together i don't have the full list but we
essentially in coming up with the steering committee we asked our consultants for their advice on
categories we were looking for people who have been a part of the community for a long time
people who have been a part of the community for a short time we're looking for community leaders
we're looking for or people who are recognized as community leaders so pastor logan for example is
the leader of a church in that area francis punch is chief served on several boards and is very
familiar with the area so uh it was it was done with with with intention as far as trying to make
sure that we're hearing from the voices of various stakeholders and people who um uh have different
ways of inputting into and different experiences within the the the project area but i can get you
the floor i don't have it on top of my head yes like raymond on there the owner of people's
funeral home is on there because raymond owns a fair amount of property within southeast dunton
but um but yes to mia's point um we were very um intentional about who was selected to serve
on the steering committee and those members were also appointed by city council fair thanks
anybody else you did just recently have a meeting with the steering committee i believe right yes
that was last thursday and that's information that we'll be getting at the joint meeting
that we're having yes because uh we discussed both the existing conditions and the uh the
strategies and so within that presentation we'll fold into the feedback that we received from the
steering committee as well okay great um anything further on this at the moment
and have we published that i'm sorry have we published that um presentation from the advice
or from the steering committee from last thursday on discuss vinton we have not but we will okay
we'll get that out there if you're interested in a sneak peek um leading up to the march 19th
meeting um we'll have that information out there because we continue to post all of our packet
materials and presentations that we do related to this project on discuss net and so if you go out
to that website then we've got all of the major projects the city's working on and that information
is out there so commissioner brook thank you chair i i imagine we'll do more of this at the the joint
session but um i didn't notice that if my memory is calibrated for the maps because you did such a
good job of getting the same scale and boundaries thank you um it looks to me like most of the
vacant parcels and that vacant parcel map were within that central area that was identified as
an area of stability and so i you kind of alluded to it before about how um you know there were
ongoing discussions about what does stability mean and and what does the change mean at the
outskirts but i i just want to better understand like you know does that mean we want to maintain
the vacancy does that mean we want to maintain the the feel of the type of architecture in the
buildings does that make sense yeah yeah so i think it it's more related to the the latter it's
it's the or the the the culture that exists within this core area and the the sort of neighborhood
character that exists within this core area the um in general the the predominant land use for
example is single-family residential in that area that is what we've heard from a community that they
like to stay the same and then those areas of change and um improvement and and uh different
things are they're accepting of that in that in those areas okay thank you just to piggyback on
that one of the things that um our project team has heard is that the residents within southeast
denton they're open to a variety of housing types right and but they're also concerned regarding
the size and scale associated with those so um they're not necessarily opposed to um slightly
increased density like duplex triplex i know we had the controversial fourplex project on robertson
but um so but what's interesting is through our engagement efforts is that they they are open to
those additional housing types i think they're probably a little more concerned in me if correct
me if i'm wrong on the larger scale multi-family developments but understanding but not wanting to
have those happen within the core of their residential neighborhoods which is completely
understandable but we had conversations also with the advisory or assuming the steering committee
regarding you know where that type of development could potentially happen
giving that you know especially north of prairie street the property has been entitled for 20 years
if not longer to allow for multi-family development but prior to the land being vacant there were
industrial uses that were there even though the property had the zoning entitlement for multi-family
housing to occur there so we've had a fair amount of conversation with the steering committee even
related to that but that's why we would see particularly in the map that mea showed where
areas of change where that type of development would be occurring because of the existing zoning
entitlements that are there is that something that was discussed when you did public engagement
about like what you knew as existing conditions with regard to entitlements and whatnot was that
it was was that discussed at all are you just doing that within the steering committee
what you when you say as far as entitlements is the zoning or yeah uh yes so with with the the map
i believe that that we had outlined was actually the i think it was the zoning map and so what
people are what people i think were were were able to see is consistently what their idea of of where
they want to see change was consistent with the the majority residential in the area and then
for non-residential or commercial areas that that currently are those they're again willing to
willing to accept change and adjustments in that area okay i was thinking i just wanted to make
sure that reality was in front of them as well you know what we already know and kind of have
that we may or may not be able to change right yeah as i say if everyone serves me correctly i
believe um we may have had some boards or had discussed that at the august workshop that we had
done but i know the issue of multi-family coming up um was um i know our consultant portion of our
project team when we did the listening sessions um there was much conversation related to that
and um and also the fact that the zoning is what it is and in the length of time and i think some
people may did not realize that the zoning has been in place for roughly 20 years that allows for the
type of multi-family development that is happening um particularly given the project that's north of
prairie street that's under construction so it's those conversations have happened off and on at
least um with the residential community but and i know with the steering committee and um because
that in fact we just had that conversation this past thursday okay i think floor is back to you
also well that that pretty much concludes my uh presentation i wanted to talk briefly about
next steps we sort of teased okay i think i'm gonna pause you because do you have to go
i can cover what's coming up real quick okay sounds good sounds good um yeah we sort of
teased the dates that we have coming up um we are we do have a a joint meeting scheduled
for pnz and city council on march 19th um where we'll discuss um we'll have a link to this
presentation and then we'll discuss the uh proposed strategies and recommendations and receive your
feedback as well as city councils um julie and i will also be doing some intercept surveys this
weekend as well as next week um more dates are to come but so far what we have are uh the american
legion uh black history month program on this coming friday so that's february 23rd uh julie
and i will be set up at a table there from 12 p.m to 230 p.m and then at mlk on saturday that's
february 24th from 10 a.m to 12 p.m we'll be set up with some flip books with the recommended
strategies as well as sort of a brief explanation of what those strategies are so that we're
presenting consistent information and we'll be getting feedback from the community on some of
those strategies and how they would like to to make to move forward with those and me why are
you going out into the community and presenting those strategies to make sure we heard them
correctly make sure that we are addressing them correctly and we found like katina was mentioning
earlier through our community engagement efforts that one of the best ways to uh receive a good
diverse amount of feedback is by going out into the communities doing those pop-ups showing at
their showing up at their events um and making sure they know our names making sure that they're
staying engaged and active but on on their terms so awesome commissioner brook thank you chair yeah
i just wanted to thank staff through this whole process it's been um very evident that you've
worked very hard i uh you know i do want to kind of wrap something together that i've heard common
between a lot of people the rich history that this area has the diversity um and sort of the care that
we need to take i'm encouraged to see that um there's some some openness to um you know some
different forms of housing so that as residents that are there that have different needs they
they can find something in that community if they want to stay there um you know as as commissioner
smith mentioned about the fears of gentrification that's a very large subject but my view on that
is there's really two um two main concerns that i think about there's probably many more than that
one is that um prices go up and up and up because there's more demand and not enough supply in that
in that area and so it seems like we're trying to address that the other concern is that um i'd like
to hear from the consultant at some point uh whether it's next actions or or feedback about
if there's anything the city could do from a city-wide land use perspective to make sure
that the opposite doesn't happen whereby um if you have a small area like this or anywhere else
that has um entitlements with the ability to to kind of develop more in that area but the rest
of the city is locked down does that increase development pressure here such that um the the
current residents are explained they would be in a different situation does that make sense
i think so just just kind of want to hear you know their take on where denton is you know whether
we're situated to to have that sort of problem and what we could do to mitigate that in the future
any other questions mea do you have anything else in your nothing add okay um thank you i think you
and julie have done a fantastic job uh not only engaging the community but collecting the data
and what you've heard and presenting it in a really fine and professional format um that presentation
is just filled with all kinds of great information um so look forward to um next steps for sure so
which would be a joint city council meeting for us right yes to discuss this further and um
consultants i assume will be there yes so um they will be there and um it'll be a joint meeting um
11 o'clock is typically when we do those joint meetings with city council but really um and me
are correct me if i'm wrong in this but the the focus of that conversation on the 19th will be to
review the draft strategies with the the two groups that are there um we presented those
draft strategies i say we um our our consultant team presented those draft strategies this past
thursday we received really good feedback from the steering committee um there were a couple
that we were going to go back in and refine and and work on but otherwise with all of the strategies
that were presented um they were very well received um the consultant team is now working on more of
the how the strategies can be achieved but like i said if you want to take a look at those in
advance we'll get those posted on discuss denton but we'll be looking for your feedback as well as
councils to see do you concur with those strategies um do you feel like there's anything that we've
missed anything that needs to be changed so kind of a similar type conversation like um what we did
when we did the special called meeting for northeast when we were asking for your feedback on
the strategies it was just being a joint session with council and these are strategies me you're
taking into the community as well when you engage with them this weekend yes yes that's coming up
come see us yeah great okay anything else
thanks okay well thanks everybody for coming on the special called work session appreciate it
and i'll go ahead and adjourn us at 6 1 p.m thank you