Southern Dallas

Dalias title attorney Marvin Kramer is drawing maps in the air as he talks. “I think this is one of the most dynamic areas in the United States,” he says, moving his hands in quick, passionate arcs outside his new title office in Cedar Hill. “South of the Trinity,” he says, “from Oak Cliff to Midlothian and from DeSoto all the way west to Mansfield-many of the people in North Dallas just don’t realize what’s happening out here.”

What is happening is a land boom and the first significant stirrings of new growth-growth that, over the next 10 years, could pump billions of dollars into new housing developments, offices, industrial sites and retail facilities in Southwest Dallas, Duncanville, DeSoto, Cedar Hill, southern Grand Prairie and other portions of once-sleepy South-west Dallas County.

“Even developers who lost their shirts in the Sixties are saying, ’I’d better get a piece of this action.’ It’s just unreal,” says Tricia Smith, a member of the Dallas Plan Commission and the Southwest Dallas subcommittee of the Mayor’s Task Force on Housing and Economic Development for southern Dallas. “Land is getting hot out there. Realtors now are having a heck of a time putting together packages for their clients.”

With North Dallas land prices continuing to rise like helium balloons and many areas north of the Trinity now densely developed, a number of land speculators, developers and builders suddenly have turned their eyes (and their bankrolls) toward the southwest area of the Metroplex. They’ve begun to seek new profit possibilities among the area’s rolling, wooded, Austinlike hills; in the huge, open fallow fields that lie within a 30-minute drive of downtown; along Interstate 20 and recently widened U.S. Highway 67; and near the boundaries of the state and federal parks that will surround Joe Pool Lake when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers begins to fill the 7,500-acre reservoir in 1986.

Since spring and the apparent resurrection of the national economy, thousands of acres of Southwest Dallas County that had grown nothing but hay or weeds for decades now have been sprouting “sold” signs and surveyors’ stakes. On some tracts, earth-moving equipment and muddy scars already promise new roads and residential construction. Throughout the county’s Southwest quadrant, new apartments, condominiums and single-family houses as well as shopping and commercial facilities are rising. A summer building boom, for instance, recently tripled the number of apartments in DeSoto. Apartment, condominium and home construction has surged in Duncanville, and the Mercedes-Benzes and Cadillacs of North Dallas land developers and businessmen have been scouting the highways and rural roads south-and especially southwest-of downtown.

Land fever has become epidemic in parts of Southwest Dallas County, as well as in the eastern fringes of Tarrant County south of Interstate 20. Developers, builders and land gamblers have been streaming into Cedar Hill’s Chamber of Commerce since May, often standing in line to get maps and fact sheets from chamber manager Marian Walker. “Things are changing so fast out here now that you just can’t keep up with them,” Walker says. “And our information packets keep going out the door just as quickly as we can put them together.”

Stories abound of land tracts in Southwest Dallas County that have doubled, tripled or quadrupled in value and have changed hands several times in a matter of days, weeks or months as speculators and developers jockey for position. “But the speculation isn’t all bad,” says Dick Mathis of Quest Southwest, a nonprofit firm that tracks and promotes growth in Southwest Dallas, DeSoto, Duncanville and Cedar Hill. “It’s bringing in the major players. And the land is being traded among people who are familiar with and have access to the techniques that were used to create growth in North Dallas.”

Some of the best-known holders of prime tracts in Southwest Dallas County include Caroline Hunt Schoellkopfs Rosewood Properties Ltd., which owns several thousand acres of land in and around Cedar Hill; Jack and Thomas Gaubert’s Independent American Group Inc., which recently announced a large residential development on 2,300 acres in Cedar Hill overlooking Joe Pool Lake; Trammell Crow’s Crow Development Co., which recently acquired 750 acres in South Grand Prairie for a sprawling, multimillion-dollar planned community at the north end of the lake near Camp Wisdom and Corn Valley roads; and The Fred Brodsky’s Co., which has begun marketing Hickory Hill Business Park, a 275-acre industrial and office complex at Interstate 20 and Hampton Road.

Late in September, Five Ten Development Co. of Dallas purchased about 260 acres of land just east of Joe Pool Lake, at the intersection of State Highway 1382 and Camp Wisdom Road. The purchase price was $4 million, or about $15,400 per acre. And plans were announced to rezone the land for a mixture of commercial tracts and single-family homes.

Other recent big purchases include a $7 million, 169-acre tract on I-20 at Cedar Ridge Road in Southwest Dallas. The land, bought by Watson & Taylor Companies, a North Dallas realty firm, is near the northern city limits of Duncanville and is zoned for residential and commercial development. And another North Dallas firm, International Investment Ad-visors, recently purchased a 70-acre tract zoned for retail and single- family housing in Cedar Hill, at the intersection of U.S. Highway 67 and Wintergarden Road.

The sudden interest in Southwest Dallas County does not mean that North Dallas and its suburbs are about to stop and die in their tracts. Most observers predict that develop-ment north of the Trinity will remain hot and heavy for many years to come. But, they say, the burgeoning land boom in the county’s southwest corner has given some quick-thinking risk-takers the chance to get in near the ground floor of what could be a long, high ride.

The land boom is proving to be both good news and bad news for Dallas Mayor Starke Taylor’s efforts to “get the dirt flying” throughout the southern half of Dallas.

In August, Taylor commissioned a 130-member task force dominated by bankers, builders, financial analysts and lawyers to devise ways to stimulate new housing and commercial, retail and industrial developments south of the Trinity. He also called for the creation of a non-profit development corporation to buy and sell land in southern Dallas and to offer attractive subsidies to help defray construction and financing costs.

Drawing heavily on former City Council-member Sid Stahl’s Southern Dallas Economic Development Plan, the mayor’s task force has targeted six subareas of southern Dallas and has split itself into subcommittees that will (with the help of an 86-member “community forums” group) try to pinpoint places where new shopping centers, office buildings, industries, apartments and single-family houses may be developed.

The good news for Taylor is that he probably will achieve a relatively easy victory in at least one of the six target areas: Southwest Dallas. The bad news is that the new speculations and developments on land in Cedar Hill, DeSoto, Duncanville and Grand Prairie are expected to siphon off many dollars that might otherwise have helped to revitalize southern Dallas.

Development booms during the next five years are predicted for Cedar Hill, DeSoto, areas of Duncanville that are east of U.S. Highway 67 and portions of Grand Prairie south of I-20.

Crow Development’s new residential and commercial project at the north end of Joe Pool Lake is expected to draw more than 7,000 new residents to Grand Prairie. Cedar Hill’s population of 9,000 is expected to triple by 1990 and to hit 97,000 by the year 2000-a growth surge that will be a bitter shock to many residents of the quiet, rural town. “We just got our first supermarket last year, and we still don’t have a single stoplight,” Walker says.

But Mathis forecasts that the area that will have the greatest growth is Southwest Dallas, in the vicinity of Red Bird Mall, I-20 and Spur 408. He predicts that this area will gain 21,000 newcomers by 1985.

Mathis and Smith point out that strong economic magnets capable of pulling new growth to Southwest Dallas already are in place and working.

The area’s main selling points include its accessibility to downtown Dallas, Red Bird Mall, Red Bird Airport, Red Bird Industrial District and D/FW airport, plus large tracts of undeveloped land along recently widened U.S. Highway 67 as well as I-20, Spur 408, Loop 12 and the scenic White Rock Escarpment, which overlooks Joe Pool Lake and the Mid-Cities.

If it’s true that quality attracts quality, money begets money and growth follows growth, several additional fectors may weigh heavily in favor of the southwest quadrant. According to a report prepared for the mayor’s task force by the Department of Housing and Neighborhood Services (DHNS), “Southwest Dallas experienced a significant increase of 23 percent in its population between 1970 and 1980-a fester growth rate than the city average of 7.1 percent. In addition, population projections for the year 2000 indicate an even higher growth rate: 28 percent.”

The report also stated that “the median family income of $19,767 is slightly above the city’s average, and Southwest Dallas homes command the highest average purchase price of all the subareas in southern Dallas.”

According to the report, Southwest Dallas has significantly higher percentages of college graduates, managers, business owners and white-collar professionals among its residents than do the five other southern sectors targeted by the task force. And portions of Southwest Dallas lie within the Duncanville, Cedar Hill and DeSoto school districts-strong selling points, real estate agents say, for home buyers who want Dallas city services but who don’t want to send their children to the Dallas Independent School District.

“It’s the sector of the southern Dallas plan that has the most going for it,” Smith says. “So the feeling [within the Southwest Dallas subcommittee of the Mayor’s Task Force] is that the need for the development corporation’s help may not be nearly as great in our area as it will be in Southeast Dallas or South Dallas.”

Recently, however, there has been considerable investment enthusiasm and development rumors about the area around Joe Pool Lake and the area just beyond the fringes of Southwest Dallas. Land in one part of Cedar Hill recently sold (and quickly sold-out, Walker says) for $75,000 per one-acre residential lot overlooking the new reservoir. Cedar Hill residents now call the area “Millionaire’s Ridge.”

In another nearby wooded residential area, acre lots with no view of the future lake have been selling for $20,000, and land costing less than $10,000 an acre is getting virtually impossible to find.

“It is a rather spectacular land boom, but it’s not yet a development boom,” Mathis says.

“You’ve got to have some things come out of the ground and make money before others will take a chance,” Smith says, who is a Dallas regional marketing officer for Allied Banc-shares Inc. and is a longtime promoter of growth in Southwest Dallas. “So the downside risk [to the land boom in Southwest Dallas County] has to be that nothing is proven yet.”

Meanwhile, development is solidly under way just across the county line in eastern Tar-rant County. “South Grand Prairie and South Arlington now are growing quite rapidly south of I-20,” says Paul Waddell, an urban analyst for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. “There’s not much speculation going on there. And part of Southeast Dallas County, particularly the Pleasant Grove area, is experiencing quite a bit of growth-primarily residential.” The stirrings in Southwest Dallas County, he says, “still seem a little bit tentative.”

If the land boom east of Joe Pool Lake does become a development boom, city and school officials in suburban Dallas County agree that numerous difficulties involving such issues as zoning, roads, sewerage, municipal services and school crowding will have to be solved.



Duncanville already has rezoned its five elementary schools in anticipation of new residential growth. Cedar Hill city, school and chamber leaders have held numerous meetings to determine how well the city’s limited facilities will be able to handle its predicted growth rate of 33 percent per year and the expected flood of lake visitors. The leaders also have met with city officials from Grand Prairie, Arlington, Mansfield and Midlothian to coordinate their appeals to the state for a new highway across the lake-one that would link I-20 and U.S. Highway 67 so that the predicted 11,000 cars a day will not overpower the area’s two-lane country roads.

The $205 million reservoir is expected to supply 15 million gallons of water a day for Duncanville, Cedar Hill, Midlothian and Grand Prairie. Originally known as Lakeview Lake, Congress voted early in 1983 to rename the reservoir in honor of the man who suggested its creation in 1961: U.S. Rep. Joe Pool of Oak Cliff.

Cedar Hill Mayor Archie Hall expects that most of his town’s new development will occur on the east side of U.S. Highway 67 on flatlands well away from the scenic hills that overlook Joe Pool Lake. The rugged escarpment will be difficult and expensive to build houses on, he says. And the two companies “that have tied up most of the land overlooking the lake [Rosewood and Independent American] will need to spend several million dollars to extend sewer lines and other utilities into their holdings,” he says.

But in Southwest Dallas and its adjoining suburbs, expectations are running high for the land boom and the forthcoming reservoir- possibly too high, some observers say.

“The lake is going to turn Cedar Hill upside down and shake it out by its roots,” Walker predicts. “A lot of people here are happy it’s coming-and a lot aren’t. We have wide-open, beautiful spaces and a lot of free, beautiful clean air,” she says. “But in the year 2000, Cedar Hill will be bigger than Duncanville or DeSoto.”

In addition to developers and speculators, she says she is now besieged daily by “people wanting the impossible dream”: cheap tracts of acreage overlooking the reservoir or cheap places to open new businesses in which they’ll be able to make quick killings from the lake traffic.

“People call me up every day wondering what the lake is doing to their property values,” says Jeff Douglas, a Realtor with ERA Reliance who sells houses in Southwest Dallas, Duncanville and Cedar Hill.

“One woman who lives in a $45,000 house several miles from the lake site called and wanted me to list her house for sale for $100,000.I told her it was going to be a long, long time before the lake had that much effect on her property value.”

Some proponents of the mayor’s task force say that initial growth concentrations in only one or two sections of southern Dallas, would be better than no growth at all south of the Trinity.

And once significant amounts of dirt actually start flying, they say, some of the momentum and enthusiasm may spill over into other, more depressed sections of the city.

“If we just touch the imagination of a fewmajor developers,” Smith says, “and if they, inturn, touch some of their friends, and if thosepeople come out and take a look, it will be likea snowball going downhill.”