No Surprise: Forest Lane Office Owners File Suit Against Sycamore Strategies to Block Affordable Housing Development

The owners of a Lake Highlands office building next to a planned affordable housing development said they were going to file a lawsuit, and they did just that. 

The Cypress Creek at Forest Lane Class A project will offer 189 units in a high-opportunity area of North Dallas, according to advocates for the project. It was approved 12-3 during a June Dallas City Council meeting. Council members Adam McGough, Cara Mendelsohn, and Casey Thomas voted against it. 

McGough, who represented District 10 at the time but was term-limited and did not seek re-election, is no longer on the City Council, nor is Casey Thomas, who also was term-limited. Kathy Stewart now represents D10 and has been heavily involved in the Cypress Creek at Forest Lane discussion, attending a contentious town hall meeting in March. 

At that meeting, William Roth, who owns a 75,000-square-foot office building adjacent to the proposed Cypress Creek site, addressed deed restrictions that he says prohibit multifamily development. 

“The deed restriction does not allow apartments on that property,” he said. “If the city is considering action to disregard that deed restriction, we feel like that’s not proper. That’s what’s called a taking of our private property rights. This is not a referendum from our standpoint on affordable housing or Class A apartments or workforce housing. Our issue is we have the right to control what development is going on in this area. For the city to be able to take that right away from us for the enrichment of a private developer does not seem to be the right thing to do.”

KERA’s Christopher Connelly broke the news of the lawsuit Friday. 

The legal documents, filed by FC Investment, Ltd, challenge an arrangement between the City of Dallas and the developer, Sycamore Strategies, that would allow the project to go up despite deed restrictions that preclude apartments from being built on the land. Five other companies that are part of the deal are also being sued, according to the KERA report. 

Sycamore Strategies developer Zach Krochtengel referred questions from a CandysDirt.com reporter to his attorney, Philip Kingston. 

Kingston could not immediately be reached for comment but told KERA the lawsuit was an “attack on affordable housing.”