Oak Lawn Fourplex Owner Says City is Ignoring Hazardous Exhaust From Assisted Living Facility
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A Dallas native who owns a 100-year-old fourplex in Oak Lawn is claiming that a memory care facility next to her property is blowing toxic chemicals into the homes of her tenants and her protests to the City of Dallas Development Services Department have gone unanswered.
The 12-story property at 4215 Herschel Ave., operated by Anthology of Highland Park, is up to code and has the proper zoning, city officials have said.
The developer sought and was granted “planned development district” zoning, which allows a combination of uses such as residential, recreation, industrial, and office. Dallas has more than 1,000 PDs and they’re traditionally viewed as loopholes allowing developers to do whatever they want with things like height and setback.
Anthology’s contractor started building the project on four assembled lots in 2021 and pulled a permit the following year for a massive generator that faces Heed’s Herschel Avenue fourplex, the landlord told CandysDirt.com.
“They’re completing [construction] now,” she said. “They’re just now trying to occupy the building. It’s been three years of total hell. It’s built up to the property line with no setback and they just installed 500 gallons of diesel fuel 10 feet from my property line.”
Forty toxic chemicals are emitted from a 16-inch pipe about once a month, Heed said.
Representatives from Anthology of Highland Park did not respond to an email request for an interview. Calls to a phone number listed on Anthology’s website were not answered, and no voicemail was set up.
The Fourplex at 4221 Herschel Ave.
Heed’s family has owned the property at 4221 Herschel in District 14 since 1961. She lived there in the 1980s after she graduated college. Three units are currently occupied and one of the current tenants previously suffered from lung cancer, Heed said. Heed is also a lung cancer survivor.
“[My tenant] said if they don’t do something about this pipe, he has to leave,” Heed said. “He said he can’t breathe that. The city has deprived us of having decent air to breathe.”
Heed joined the International Code Council and has read through hundreds of pages of code trying to find a violation.
“The code only says it has to be 10 feet from the property line and the exhaust has to be 5 feet from windows and doors,” she said. “Can you imagine having this exhaust 5 feet from windows and doors? It doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s crazy.”
The ICC literature does say that the exhaust has to be released to a safe location — and that’s open to interpretation, Heed said.
“The literature also says to be mindful of prevailing winds because it’s going to blow this stuff wherever,” she said. “The wind blows westerly and it blows right over into my yard. The day I met with the inspector and the owner at the property, it was blowing 30 mph. If [the generator] were to explode, it would blow my building to smithereens.”
Heed says Deputy Building Inspector Donald Dixson told her the building is code-compliant because it’s within 10 feet of her property. Dixson did not respond to a request seeking comment for this story, nor did his supervisor, Development Services Director Andrew Espinoza.
“The requirement was 10 feet from the line, and they did meet that; 5 feet from the operable windows, they did meet that,” Heed said. “But that’s all they did. They ignored advice of being cognizant of prevailing winds and where it’s going to blow emissions and they ignored whether it would be blowing into a safe location. Those were the only two contentions that I could find that were in the code.”
What’s Next For Cynthia Heed And Her Oak Lawn Property?
From a legal standpoint, Heed said she has a few arrows in her quiver: that the exhaust is not being released to a safe location and that the wind speeds were not accounted for when factoring in the distance between properties. She wants the generator relocated and is also requesting that the developer place a retaining wall against her side yard to manage excavation.
“The inspector let them do anything,” she said. “They won’t even make them support their side excavation and I have spent several thousand dollars to replenish my side yard with dirt and bolster my side with plywood. I have had four trees die due to the water runoff into their 2-foot open-air drainage ditch on both sides of this property.”
The contractor backfilled the excavation with mulch that was placed around the landscaping, Heed said, noting that it was “highly organic, fluffy, insubstantial soil to replace the dirt that I have lost, and at a 45-degree slope, inches below the fence.”
“This soil was completely inappropriate for this purpose and will not last the summer,” she said. “It should have been inorganic compacted soil to replace the dirt that was there.”
Heed spoke before the City Council last month but said no one followed up with her afterward.
The landlord added that during a time when Dallas is experiencing an affordable housing crisis, city officials and greedy developers have created a scenario in which her fourplex is no longer a desirable place to live.
“They’re destroying the rentability of my property,” she said.
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Candy and April – this is so close to some of the nightmare I have been going through for 3.5 years and counting! The new 5 story apt building being built next to me has their garage openings directly blowing into the windows of my house. Even with the windows shut the exhaust comes in. (100 year old windows in a historic district). The foreman even warns me when they are going to be doing something that might result in fumes and such coming in my windows. The developer is no help and has damaged my property from the back to the front. At one point there is 3 feet between the brick of their property and the brick of my house. I have talked to the same people with the city with no resolution or was ignored. I would love to speak with Ms Heed.
Thank you for writing this April. The owner of this Anthology is in the ‘care’ business, they sure do not care about me or my tenants. The diesel fuel exhaust is not in their face, that is why it is placed at my fence. Who does such evil to neighbors? When this project was announced, I thought the City of Dallas would protect my property by observing the codes, Was I stupid or what? Really stupid. What codes? When I asked the inspector to enforce the code for contractor Cadence Mcshane to do their job and support my excavated side yard he told me to just get an attorney. I thought it was his job to enforce building codes, not on this project. This entire ordeal is shameful and has highlighted the corruption of the City of Dallas.
The diesel fuel exhaust is infiltrating my building as it drifts over from the exhaust pipe, actually it is thrust out of the black pipe sticking out the front of the Anthology building (lovely) with such force that it is pushed into my yard, into my windows, doors, hallway, and filling the apartments with black soot on the surfaces. One of my tenants after a 8 hour period with the generator on and the pipe pumping soot and diesel fuel exhaust became ill with a severe headache and had to close off rooms to get away from the noise, soot, and exhaust.
I expected this and pointed this out that this would be a major problem, you would have to be blind or profoundly stupid to not see that his pipe would be sending all exhaust to my property, That was what they wanted to get it away from their windows, doors to minimize any soot, noise, exhaust away from their clients, so they put it at my fence and had not a care in the world about me or my property or my tenants or the destruction it is causing me. I have black soot all over the surfaces of the newly painted apartment. This causes cancer. This is a horrific situation for me.
The owner of this facility, The Anthology, still will not move the exhaust pipe, the generator, even though I have statements from my tenants of problems this is causing to them, the noise is severly above the allowed limit at the fence which is 56 decibels, the noise is 130 decibels, enough to cause hearing loss, the odor is sickening, the emissions cause lung cancer and are not to be breathed. The black soot diesel exhaust imediately within 1 second enters my building, halls, living rooms. I cannot rent the vacant unit because of this. The two tenants affected have hung in waiting for something to change, but so far, even with the many, many thousands I have paid in legal fees, the owner will not stop this poisoning of my property. This man advertises he cares about his clients( assisted living), Perhaps he does, but he does not care for anyone that does not pay him such as his neighbor. Truly evil.
They are scurrying about getting ready to occupy their building, while, my apartment next door is uninhabitable due to their enormous diesel fuel pipe they installed at the fence. The exhaust drifts directly into my building each and every month that this is on, various times. Not only that, we have noise that is more than twice the legal limit from the engine, it set off the fire alarm to a 7 story building across the street last Monday it was so loud. My property is being ruined from the soot coating the brick, the trim, the interior hallways, our carpet, our hardwood floors, all surfaces have a layer of soot. No one will live in the one unit near this, they cannot,they cannot breath this highy toxic air. My property is absolutely destroyed thanks to the Anotholgy of Highland Park owners, EVIL.