The Flower Mound Leader/ Posted February 16, 2000 / Jason Lamers
Wide open spaces
Residents, developers meet to discuss ecological future
More than 150 residents, developers and landowners converged on Circle R Ranch, looking for answers.
Town officials conducted their first Conservation Symposium on Saturday, hoping to educate the public about the benefits of open space. The 11-hour event was not all about Flower Mound, though. Seven speakers from across the country were on hand to discuss how conservation development is helping the entire United States.
Local residents, representatives from state organizations, builders, architects and residents from area cities attended the event.
“That was our goal. We wanted it to be something for everyone so it would have a broad appeal, and I think we accomplished that,” said Merideth Culbert-Davis, a spokesperson for the town.
Speakers talked and worked with the audience, explaining how open space and land trusts are becoming popular across the country. In addition to the protection of wildlife and positive scenic benefits, they said open space provides a more practical advantage in the form of economic benefits.
While some would argue that it’s not economically efficient to leave land open, the speakers begged to differ. They focused on four benefits of open space -- it encourages tourism and business development, saves on pollution control costs and public improvement funding and enhances property value.
Carolyn Scheffer, a coordinator for the Texas Land Trust Council, which is under Texas Parks and Wildlife, was the first speaker. She said open space is a positive thing for any community.
“The benefit actually is a mutual thing; there is both an economic and quality of life benefit,” she said. “I think the economic benefit is obviously with good conservation development. People will be attracted to your community.”
Scheffer also said studies conducted throughout the country indicate that conservation development is actually less costly than development of more infrastructure.
“A lot of times the answer is quality of life,” she said. “If we protect and enhance conservation development and intertwine that with the business fabric of the community, you’ve made the whole community a more attractive place to live.”
The best part of a symposium of this proportion, Scheffer said, is that it lets residents and landowners know they have choices.
“People don’t think they have choices, so we get a lot of these cookie-cutter type approaches that don’t consider open space, which in the long run, may be more economically smart”, she said. “Flower Mound is really being a leader for all communities in the state by looking at these choices.”
Other speakers were Stephen Small, an attorney and author of “Preserving Family Lands”, Eben Fodor, author of “Better NOT Bigger – How to take control of Urban Growth and Improve Your Community”, Randall Arendt, author of “Conservation Design for Subdivisions”, Bob Engstrom, developer of the Fields of St. Croix, David Stahle, professor at the University of Arkansas and Kevin Bennett from the Yampa Valley Land Trust in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Mayor Lori DeLuca said the symposium was informative and inspiring to town staff members, landowners and other cities.
“I always knew that preserving open space was good for the environment, but probably the biggest thing I learned was how much more economically beneficial open space is to landowners and the town as well,” she said.
Although there were some concerns with the cost of the symposium, DeLuca said the money was well spent. She said she believed the audience took home a sense of hope that may not have been there in the past.
“Residents learned that there is hope,” DeLuca said. “They learned that there is something that they can actually do to keep Flower Mound a great place to live. They learned that our town doesn’t have to be a sea of roof tops and strip malls.”