REZONING THE GROVE

For years it has been considered the blue-collar back door to Dallas; now Pleasant Grove has suddenly become a development hot spot. Four major developers have filed five different applications to rezone 240 acres in the Grove. Trammell Crow leads the pack, with two applications for 151 acres bordering the Mesquite city limits.

The developers want to build smaller houses on smaller lots than are permitted by Mesquite or other suburbs. They’re aiming their sales pitches toward first-time buyers in the $15,000- to $30,000-a-year income range. The houses will be priced from $40,000 to $50,000. Some will be garden houses or town houses as small as 800 to 1200 feet. The suburbs have typically forbidden anything smaller than 1400 square feet, considering them to be almost un-American. The value of the Pleasant Grove land is that it is within Dallas city limits, which allows the smaller homesites.