LH Press Library
New Housing Development on the Way
Proponents call Urban Reserve an environmentally friendly project
Lake Highlands People, by Kris Imherr
February 25, 2005
By the time you read this, the Dallas City Council likely will have voted on a zoning change paving the way for new single-family homes in a development that supporters are touting both for its aesthetic appeal and conservation consciousness.
The project, dubbed Urban Reserve, will encompass 53 homes on 12 acres north of Royal Lane and southwest of Lutheran High School off Stults Road. Urban Edge Developers Ltd., a Dallas-based company, is spearheading the undertaking.
Vocal opposition to Urban Reserve has been sparse.
Neva Dean, chief planner in the Current Planning Division of the city’s Department of Development Services, said the two people spoke against the project at the City Plan Commission hearing on rezoning.
Ms. Dean said the city sent 85 notices to neighborhood residents in the vicinity of the proposed building site. As of Feb. 18, two had come back in favor and 16 in opposition to the change.
Urban Edge vice president and spokeswoman Catherine Horsey said the proposed new development will be important in two ways: “one is that it is going to be a neighborhood of modernist houses, that is, architect designed, cutting edge style.”
The other is that Urban Reserve “will be Dallas’ first low-impact development.”
Ms. Horsey said contemporary looks and sustainable design – use of a minimum amount of resources in construction that will require minimal upkeep – will serve as common denominators among the new homes.
While owners will be free to choose their architect, guidelines and an architectural review committee will govern blueprints for each.
Access to the properties will be via Jerry Road, the street that branches west off Stults Road as it sharply curves east at the southern boundary of the Lutheran High School campus. Urban Edge will seek to change Jerry Road’s name to Vanguard Way.
While some homes will neighbor Orbiter Park at the southern end of the development, there will be no Royal Lane access.
Ms. Horsey said about a third of the lots already have been spoken for. She said Urban Edge owner and principal Diane Cheatham and the project’s master-plan architect, Robert L. Meckfessel, both plan to build homes for themselves there.
Lost will vary in size from 5,000 to 14,000 square feet and range in price from $90,000 to $300,000. There will be no minimum size for a home, but “we have a maximum of somewhere between 6,000- and 8,000-square-feet,” she said.
She said construction costs will range from $300,000 to $1 million per home.
One of the main features of the new development is its low impact on the environment.
Ms. Horsey said Urban Edge is very sensitive to the fact that the development will back to White Rock Creek on its western edge. She said the company plans to keep as many of the mature trees on the property as possible and retain the existing rolling topography.
Plans also call for capturing rainwater in two ponds and using them as sources of landscape irrigation. The main thoroughfare and other paved surfaces will be narrow. Ms. Horsey said, to minimize the amount of paving and corresponding water loss due to runoff.
Favorable community comments about the project include those of neighborhood resident Linda Moore, frequently the activist on behalf of Stults Road homeowners on zoning cases affecting them.
“I think it is an outstanding development,” Ms. Moore says. “They’re building something that is very high quality. Every home is going to be designed by an architect, and it’s very environmentally friendly. They’re leaving the land and the contour of the land in the same situation. They’re not sweeping it clean and making everything flat and building cookie-cutter homes.”
Ms. Moore said she has heard two main objections from neighbors who don’t share her approval.
There are those who “didn’t want to see it [the property] developed, period, into anything,” she said.
And there have been some objections in terms of traffic, because Lutheran High already generates a lot of traffic during peak periods.
Courtesy of Lake Highlands People
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