North Oak Cliff’s Jimtown Petitions to Allow Accessory Dwelling Units By Right

The residents of North Oak Cliffs Jimtown are saying, “Yes in My Backyard” in a big way. The 10.7-acre region — one of five neighborhoods slated for zoning changes in the West Oak Cliff Area Plan — could become among the first in Dallas to create an overlay zoning district for accessory dwelling units by right. 

City staff members told CandysDirt.com that Jimtown is the first “organized neighborhood” to seek the overlay, but City Plan Commissioner Melissa Kingston pointed out on social media after this story was published that the Belmont Addition Conservation District and Oak Cliff Gateway have allowed ADUs by right for several years.

The Jimtown Focus Area, as defined by WOCAP, is bounded by Clarendon Drive, Hampton Road, Brandon Street, and Franklin Road. The area includes 48 single-family houses primarily built in the 1920s and two multifamily properties constructed in 1984. 

The Jimtown Focus Area is not to be confused with the larger Jimtown neighborhood and Jimtown Neighborhood Association, an area generally bounded by Hampton Road, Clarendon Drive, Ravinia Drive, and Wright Street, the plan states. The area lies adjacent to the Hampton/Clarendon Focus Area and the potential land use changes recommended for that corridor will ultimately have an impact on Jimtown.

West Oak Cliff Authorized Hearings 

An authorized hearing is a city-initiated rezoning. WOCAP identified Downtown Elmwood, North Oak Cliff Neighborhood Center, Hampton-Clarendon Corridor, Jimtown, and the Tyler-Vernon Station Area as areas that could benefit from a zoning overhaul.

Elmwood’s zoning changes were approved in late February, including a “shop front overlay” to ease parking requirements and allow for small businesses such as coffee shops. 

Game Changer: West Oak Cliff Area Plan Could Put Residents in Zoning Driver’s Seat

We learned when WOCAP was unanimously approved by the Dallas City Council in October 2022 that the existing zoning in a portion of Jimtown does not align with existing land uses. The area plan calls specifically for sidewalks and “missing middle housing” such as ADUs in the area. 

“The Jimtown Focus Area has several narrow city streets with sidewalks that are in disrepair and in need of improvements to bring them up to ADA compliance,” the plan states. “Additionally, the area has three alleys, two of which (in the Emmett/Brandon block and in the Kingston/Emmett block) are unimproved and in need of improvements due to current use.”

As for ADUs, the area plan recommends rezoning Jimtown’s existing multifamily zoning district to not allow for multifamily development unless already existing. 

“Through a Conservation District or another base zoning category, instead permit only single-family and accessory dwelling units by-right,” the plan states (page 93). “As a part of this rezoning, explore urban design standards for new residential construction to align future designs with the surrounding neighborhood context.”

The Jimtown rezoning is tentatively set to go before the City Plan Commission on Nov. 21.

How Jimtown Could Change

At an Oct. 3 meeting of the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce, Chief Planner Sef Okoth and District 1 Councilman Chad West reviewed the process for the five authorized hearings within the WOCAP zone. 

The WOCAP public engagement piece kicked off during the COVID-19 pandemic in a region where a majority of the property owners are Spanish speakers and had not been engaged with city staff in decades.

“A lot of trust had to be built with community members,” West said. “They did a really good job on the outreach. This was an area that impacted 40,000 individuals.”

Okoth said that when city planners began working specifically with Jimtown neighbors, the residents “told the city they wanted to look at how to make this area more walkable, more adaptive to the uses that were already there, and to make sure that everything that was coming in was compatible with the surrounding neighborhood.”

“They wanted to protect the businesses that were already there,” he said.

Form-Based Zoning

City staff suggested a “form-based zoning district,” which uses physical form to foster predictable built results. Form-based code addresses the relationship between building facades and the public realm, the form and mass of buildings in relation to one another, and the scale and types of streets and blocks, according to city documents. 

“It is a neighborhood-friendly zoning that doesn’t just look at what businesses and buildings are coming in but how they relate to what is already there and the street segments already there and the surrounding community,” Okoth explained. “It also provides flexibility in a range of different, context-sensitive uses.”

A form-based zoning district allows for the definition of design standards, the planner added. 

Now That ForwardDallas Is on The Books, What’s the Future of Accessory Dwelling Units?

Transportation changes to create safer streets — such as widening sidewalks or narrowing roadways — can be made once the zoning is in place, West explained. 

But the big news is that Jimtown neighbors want the right to build accessory dwelling units without going before the Board of Adjustment for a variance. 

“They have a lot of accessory structures sometimes used for families or their guests [in Jimtown],” Okoth said. “They asked if we would consider doing an overlay to allow ADUs by right.”

The City Plan Commission could make a recommendation in late November, and then the rezoning will go before the Dallas CIty Council. 

“The community had the foresight to decide that they needed a roadmap to guide how growth was going to happen in their neighborhood,” West said. 

It’s expected that the North Oak Cliff rezoning will also go before CPC in November, with Hampton-Clarendon and Clarendon-Edgefield slated in December or January.