Environmental advocates scored a win Wednesday when the Dallas City Council rejected a bid for a new concrete batch plant near the city’s MoneyGram soccer park, a potential training site for the FIFA World Cup.
Four council — Omar Narvaez, Jaime Resendez, Cara Mendelsohn and Paul Ridley — and Mayor Eric Johnson voted against the batch plant, a facility that produces concrete. Ten council ed the application.
But the council needed three-fourths, 12, of its to approve the application because the City Plan Commission denied the application in February.
“I am doing exactly what my community said to do,” said Narvaez, whose district covers the proposed batch plant and park properties. Narvaez came into office opposing a concrete batch plant near homes.
Environmental advocates, , many of whom were ed by northwest and West Dallas residents, have said they were worried that the proximity to industry meant that taxpayer dollars were being used to maintain the more than $30 million park areas, often used by children and residents recreationally.
Other advocates have expressed concern about the effect on the Elm Fork floodplain and other park properties such as the Luna Vista golf course, and the LB Houston tennis and pickleball center.
Council debated the issue for several hours two weeks ago before delaying the vote to Wednesday.
To balance the city’s infrastructure needs and protect its park properties, Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Adam Bazaldua and council member Zarin Gracey came with plans to require additional buffer zones to minimize the impact of the dust from the plants and shorten the permit from five to three years.
Ultimately, the council had to choose between its parks and industry in an area where they’ve coexisted for decades, and parks won.
After the vote, the air in the council chamber was somber.
The applicant, Brandon Johnson, left disappointed and some council ’ faces were downcast as they watched him go.
Those who ed Johnson highlighted the acres of woods that separate the proposed plant from the park. It’s also located in one of three industrial hubs conceived by the city’s latest land-use guide, which scaled back the presence of industry near residential areas.
“I’m a football coach. I coach my own kids,” Johnson said, adding that he understood the environmental concerns. But at the end of the day, he said, he had done everything by the book and chose to build the structure in an area that’s filled with industries.
Nearly 20 plants dot the region’s map and at least one operator has a permanent permit.
These plants, several council said, are essential to helping create the concrete needed to build homes and pave streets, all of which is needed for further development.
Council member Kathy Stewart said the city needed to put together problem-solving hats to find a resolution to the long-term question: Can parks and industries really coexist?
Batch plants were allowed by right until 2022 when the city began requiring specific use permits. Different factions of the city government have offered contrasting visions for the area in northwest Dallas. The soccer park was built over a former landfill.
Park and environment officials touted voter intent in at least three bond elections that funded the soccer park. The area separating the soccer park and the proposed batch plant was envisioned as another recreational space that would need another bond investment, said John Jenkins, the park department’s director.
Other noted that, at the same time, Dallas needs the concrete to cater to its commercial and residential needs.
“I think it was a very romantic notion to start turning landfills into soccer fields, but here we are in this bipolar state,” council member Gay Donnell Willis said.
County Commissioner John Wiley Price and Willis Johnson, a prominent southern Dallas political consultant and the father of the applicant, came to council a second time in of the batch plant operator.
There were other power brokers in the room, too.
Dan Hunt, president of FC Dallas, signed up to speak against the batch plant and other industrial uses around the soccer park.
After the meeting, Hunt said it was an “eye-opening experience.”
“I think the city is in a difficult situation. I really feel for the applicant,” Hunt said. “He wants to grow his business, and there is a sense of unfairness in that there are other batch plants around there and the rules have constantly changed over time.”
At the same time, he said, the soccer park and the children playing on the fields needed to be protected.