Home > News > Lake Cities Sun: David W. Showalter meets with residents to consider legal options

Residents meet to consider legal options

Anthony Scott

Sun Staff Writer

Lake Cities Sun   Lake Dallas, Texas page 1

Thursday, December 04, 2008

As residents of Lake Dallas were still digesting Thanksgiving dinner, one neighborhood was struggling to digest news that their homes could be bought up by an apartment developer.

Attorney David W. Showalter met with concerned residents and gave an overview of the process of eminent domain to educate them last Friday,which provided a public forum for discussion on the matter. About 40 people attended the meeting at the Best Western in Lake Dallas, including city council member and mayor candidate Tony Marino.

Last month the city's economic development corporation met to hear a presentation of a land study of about 12 acres of undeveloped railroad property. The presentation turned out to be a proposal from McDougal Companies to develop apartments, townhomes and single family lots on about 36.25 acres, where existing Lake Dallas homes already sit. The corporation paid $25,000 for the land study.

Marc McDougal, president of McDougal Companies, suggested developing apartments, town homes and single-family lots where homes already sit.  McDougal said the land was best suited for residential use.  As it stands, McDougal Companies can profit from the project if it is approved by city council by bidding on the development or overseeing it.

The process could drag on for years and involve eminent domain, said Showalter. In this situation, eminent domain would allow the city to force people who won't sell off property in the name of economic development.

McDougal's proposal looked at 41 properties between Betchan Avenue and Carlisle Drive, running from the railroad all the way to Main Street.  McDougal Company's land study included gathering information on who owns the properties, the assessed value, estimates of purchasing costs,street additions, utility relocation and an overall redevelopment plan for the area.

Showalter was not hired by anyone, but was invited to speak by people who may be impacted by the proposed taking of property. His firm, David Showalter LLP, represents land owners in eminent domain cases around the state in cases involving highway projects, drainage projects, pipeline and power lines and the like, he said.

While the Texas Bill of Rights guarantees property owners that eminent domain cannot be used to take their property for economic development purposes, it does state that there are limited exception provided by the law.

Such exceptions exist according to Texas statutes, if the economic development is a secondary purpose resulting from municipal community development or municipal urban renewal activities to eliminate an existing affirmative harm on society from slum or blighted areas..." In order for this to happen, the entire neighborhood would need to be declared a public improvement district.

Despite being on the economic development corporation that approved sending the item to city council, Tony Marino was at the meeting saying he was against it. "I'm here, I'm against this," he said. "This is Tony Marino's stance."

Marino said he lives near that part of the neighborhood but his name wasn't on the list of property owners whose properties McDougal Companies could propose buying. "I think this whole thing is absurd," said former mayor pro-tem David Shershen. "The tax revenue that's going to be generated from any kind of apartments is going to catch up on us from the back end because it's going to influx the population of the school district to a point where they're going to raise our taxes on our schools."

Shershen said he wasn't against funding education but was not for overflowing the schools and burdening the tax payers."I'm not for somebody coming in and forcing people to lose their land and their home for some kind of economic development that the city is going to lose on in the long run," he said. "When that thing is 10 years old, it's going to need repairs. When it's 20 years old, you're going to be looking at bulldozers coming in and doing something else."

Marino also added that eminent domain is a bad thing and said that the economic development corporation brought McDougal Companies in to do a study on the railroad property, not the entire neighborhood.

Lake Cities Sun owner and real estate investor Terry Lantrip was present at the meeting when McDougal presented his study and asked Marino why the economic development corporation hired an apartment developer to decide what needed to be done.

Lantrip also asked why they were so approving of it when they voted to send the issue up to city council. "You were on that board and you said let's go take it to the council," he said. "It should have stopped right then when it was said we may have to take some people's property."

Marino then said he is a full-time teacher and not a full-time council member, and because he was tired from teaching all day things didn't digest with him at the time. The economic development corporation meetings occur on the first Monday of the month at 7:30 p.m., the same time the mayoral candidate meets with city council every Thursday.

"I don't think they can come in and take over,"said Ivan Bounds, who owns about five acres in the center of the planned development and lived on his property for 80 years. "I don't want somebody telling me I have to get off my place."

Developers have wanted to put apartments on the property for decades. Going back to Mayor Johnny Vinson who was mayor in the late'70s and early '80s, the city has continually said no, Bounds said. "We've been against this [type of development] for all these years," he said. "Just leave me alone. I live in a small world and all I want is to be left alone."

"It's going to impact the city in a negative way,"Shershen said. "It's going to impact the citizens in a negative way and I saw that the best way to do this is to elect people who do your bidding, who take the responsibility to provide good government for y'all, and not sit here and have to get law firms and go through individual bargaining."

The city council was originally scheduled to hold an executive session with McDougal Companies at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 11, at Lake Dallas City Hall.  According to City Secretary Beverly Weikum, this item was removed from the city' council agenda. McDougal called the city and said he wouldn't be available until January.