With 14-1 City Council Vote, H-E-B Secures Rezoning for Its First Planned Dallas Location
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It looks like Dallas is on its way to getting its first H-E-B after the city council voted 14-1 on Wednesday to approve the grocer’s zoning request for a controversial site at the southeast corner of LBJ and Hillcrest Road.
The vote came after a few hours of public comment and discussion at the horseshoe. While no one was against the brand’s entry into Dallas proper in principle, there was emphatic pushback from neighborhood residents who feel the location is ill conceived and would be a significant imposition in terms of additional traffic.
For months now, opponents of the rezoning request — which calls for a change from neighborhood office to regional retail — have claimed H-E-B’s plans for putting a 127,000-square-foot store with a parking garage on 10 acres is excessive and would add considerably to the existing congested traffic patterns that the neighborhood’s proximity to LBJ already causes.
“This is what’s very frightening to me: to avoid traffic, drivers will seek alternative routes,” said neighborhood resident and teacher Diane Glaser. “They’ll go up and down our neighborhood streets.”
Serious concerns have also been raised about flood plain issues and how delivery trucks will navigate their entry to the property. There’s also the potential impact on neighboring businesses in the small medical office park next to the site.
“We need and request the input that a planned development process would provide,” said Dan Newell, speaking on behalf of property owner Beverly Heflin. “Please do not destroy our neighboring office buildings with sweeping zoning overreach, which impacts the ability to access our buildings.”
Despite a majority of public speakers opposing the rezoning, supporters of the project had a better turnout than they’d had at previous community engagement and city meetings. H-E-B got a lot of praise for being a longstanding community partner in local charitable efforts.
“They are supportive of the communities in which they operate as part of their DNA, and it’s particularly refreshing that H-E-B says that it will not seek governmental incentives to build its store,” said Larry Ginsberg. “The tract is going to be redeveloped as something. If not a food store, then something else. Perhaps as a multi-story apartment project. A more intensive use of this site fronting on LBJ is inevitable.”
H-E-B also voluntarily added a litany of deed restrictions to its application, with a company representative even announcing more at the meeting on Wednesday evening. Some of the prohibited uses now include child or adult care facilities, hotels, boarding houses, lodging, private game clubs, car washes, home improvement centers, and non-grocery-accessory liquor stores.
“We appreciate H-E-B management constructively working with us and offering some public and private deed restrictions which would eliminate many of the uses not related to an H-E-B store that would be allowed if regional retail zoning was passed,” said Bruce Wilke, president of the Hillcrest Forest Neighborhood Association, noting that the HOA didn’t take an official position one way or the other.
Council Member Bill Roth (District 11), who represents the area where the store would be built, motioned to deny the rezoning request without prejudice, arguing that H-E-B should try to reach further accommodation with the project’s detractors.
“We have got to figure out a way to create a process that allows excellent companies like H-E-B to be able to do business in this city and to be able to do business in neighborhoods in an effective, thoughtful [way], and not adverse for these folks,” Roth said.
His motion didn’t gain any traction. The importance of ushering in the brand’s first store was appreciated across the board, however, Council Members Zarin Gracey (District 3) and Maxie Johnson (District 4) took the opportunity to point out the irony that southern Dallas has been asking for such investment while the first H-E-B was going to be built in a neighborhood full of vocal opposition.
“Thank you for the Joe V’s, but we are H-E-B worthy. We have the money and the dollars to support it, but oftentimes we’re not getting there,” said Gracey. “So this conversation, quite frankly, about any of these grocery stores, is just continually frustrating because we find ourselves here advocating in the north and coming up short in the south, and that is extremely frustrating to me.”
Roth ended up being the sole vote against rezoning. Officials on the City Plan Commission voted unanimously to recommend rezoning back in September.
