The Dallas Morning News / ___ 2000 / Laurie Fox
Preservation issues attract new attention
Area's growth prompts Flower Mound seminar
Skip Lemon owns about five acres of land in southern Grand Prairie and worries about what ever-encroaching development will do to the foxes, hawks and roadrunners who live there.
Joe Freeman owns 92 acres in Flower Mound and just wants to keep the traffic and strip malls at bay.
Both landowners, along with state and local officials and development experts from across the country tackled the issue of conservation and green space Saturday at a seminar sponsored by the town of Flower Mound.
The fast-growing city is only about 40 percent developed, but it has become a leader in preserving green spaces that serve as habitat for native animals, protect drainage patterns and keep natural beauty. The town passed the land-use portion of its master plan in September. The plan calls for conservation development districts, preservation of historic stands of trees, and mandates for green spaces.
The seminar, the first of its kind in North Texas, was designed to teach how development, good property values and preserving green spaces can go together, said Flower Mound Mayor Lori DeLuca.
"People want better neighborhoods and to preserve trees and open spaces, but they don't know how," she said. "This seminar is a wonderful opportunity to share development strategies that protect the environment and still turn a good profit for landowners."
A panel of national urban planning experts told about 100 area political leaders and residents that although the country still has enough space to develop responsibly, land and natural resources should be considered first.
"Any natural feature adds to a development," said Randall Arendt, a nationally renowned land-use planner who has designed conservation techniques for subdivisions that add value to projects while reducing costs for developers. "There hasn't been a single development done where people won't pay more to live next to an open space. Everyone wants that."
Kevin Bennett, president of the Steamboat Springs, Colo., City Council, said his city has pulled together $20 million in grant money within six years for conservation projects.
"You have to ask yourself if you want to live in an integrated community with park trails, real agriculture and historic preservation or in a community where everything has been leveled to maximize things for a developer," Mr. Bennett said. "The communities who embrace conservation are the ones whose property values will increase."
Robert Engstrom helped create two award-winning conservation residential developments in Minnesota that include new homes surrounded by native prairie and ornamental grasses, an organic farm and a restored Civil War-era barn. He said the project's first phase was 80 percent sold within the first six months.
"People in Minnesota want the same thing as people in Texas, to preserve the rural atmosphere," Mr. Engstrom said. "The idea is not that complicated, but it's sometimes difficult to get there."
But as time goes on, states such as Texas, which leads the country in the loss of farm and ranch land, must become protective of its open spaces and find new ways to preserve land, water and wildlife, said Carolyn Scheffer, a 25-year Texas Parks and Wildlife employee who now coordinates the Texas Land Trust Council.
"By 2030, our state's population will have doubled and even more land will turn over by then," Ms. Scheffer said. "The citizens have to push for this effort to save the land."
Ms. Scheffer said cities such as Austin and San Antonio have worked with local taxpayers there to purchase development rights to protect water there and that the Legislature may consider similar plans to involve the public in such preservation efforts.
Debra Edmondson, a Southlake council member, said that although her Tarrant County town already is about half-developed, she said it's not too late to include open space issues in the city's land-use plan.
"Development has come so quickly to so many areas that the voices calling for preservation aren't heard until it's too late," she said.
Southlake, for example, recently passed an ordinance requiring 25 percent of a commercial site to remain green and undeveloped, Mrs. Edmondson said.
"It's in our open spaces that we find our uniqueness," she said.
Mr. Lemon echoed that sentiment.
"We don't object to the bulldozing, but it ought to make sense," Mr. Lemon said. "Development is just pushing so far and so fast."
Mr. Freeman, who has lived in Flower Mound for 13 years, said traffic and urban sprawl already have robbed the largely-rural town of appeal that even the best conservation plan can't restore.
"I don't think we've even seen the best answer we can develop," he said.
Staff writer Annette Reynolds contributed to this report.