Good Neighborhoods

SPARKMAN CLUB ESTATES LOOKS LIKE any other middle-class North Dallas pocket-well-maintained brick houses, clipped lawns, quiet. So why do Dallas realtors and anyone who has ever lived in Sparkman make it sound like a Leave-It-To-Beaver Utopia?

Well, that’s sort of what it is. Not Utopia, but a neighborhood formed in the mid-’50s around values that hold up-family, close neighborhood ties, a sense of community.

“It feels like a small town where you know everyone and the kids grow up together,” says Sheila Selly, a Sparkman native and homeowner for eight years.

At the heart of Sparkman, bounded by Royal Lane, Webb Chapel. Merrell and Marsh Lane, is the Sparkman Community Club swimming and tennis facility. Now in its 34th year, it is the glue that holds the neighborhood together. Only neighborhood residents are eligible for membership in the nonprofit, no-frills club.

“It’s not just the club,” says Brooks Haley, longtime resident. “There is a heritage here. Many second-generation residents, like myself, grew up in Spark-man and came back to raise our kids.”

In the summer, families are out walking in flip-flops, beach towels over their shoulders as they head to the pool. There’s a steady stream of parties, swim team practices and a Fourth of July parade. There’s a club for parents to trade off baby-sitting, a poker group, a bridge club, a tennis team and an Over 50 club.

“Living here is like living on a cruise ship. If it’s Friday it must be volleyball.” says Laura Miller, who moved to the neighborhood a couple of years ago.

Lynn and Steve Brown bought a four-bedroom home in Sparkman 13 years ago. But last year, when their two children reached school age, their desire for a larger house and concern about DISD schools had them looking outside Dallas. Set on building a custom home, the Browns picked Coppell-an easy commute to downtown Dallas with good schools and new, well-priced subdivisions springing up. They had a builder draw up plans, and they put their Sparkman house on the market.

When they began to get offers, they called off their moving plans.

“When people came to look at the house I went on and on about the neighborhood. I showed them the Sparkman newspaper, the new playground at the club. I’d tell them about the swim team and that the DISD schools here turned out to be good,” says Lynn. “When they left I stood here wondering. Why are we leaving? We could never find any place else like this. So, we’re staying put.”

Despite its popularity, the neighborhood has its problems. Residents worry about crime in some nearby apartments. Nor has Sparkman been immune to the decline in housing values that hit the rest of the city. Sparkman homes have slipped from the $120,000-5150,000 range to the $90,000-$145,000 range over the last five years. Regardless, says real estate agent Martha Morguloff, it is considered one of the prime neighborhoods south of LBJ because of the community involvement and because it offers good value for the location.

“Twice as many homes have sold in Sparkman as in the neighborhoods in the surrounding area,” says Morguloff. “In the last 18 months, 34 homes have sold in Sparkman. During the previous 18 months only 17 homes sold. It is in demand.”

The Boom In Rockwall

Carol Byrd grew up in Dallas, the big city. Eight years ago she and her husband bought a frame farmhouse in Rockwall for $75,000. “When I was a kid we thought of this as a podunk town. But when we had children we liked the idea of a small-town atmosphere, good schools and some acreage,” she says.

The town of Rockwall, located 23 miles east of Dallas in Rockwall County, is hardly podunk anymore. It’s a county seat with a population that has grown from 5,939 in 1980 to 11.000 in 1992. The median household income is $44,895. one of the highest in North Texas. Us rural appeal, its location on the eastern shore of Lake Ray Hubbard and its nearness to Dallas are key factors supporting the development of several new subdivisions.

Most of the building is going on near the shoreline, where developers feature resort lifestyle neighborhoods. They also carry resort price tags, starting at $150,000 and zooming up to more than S3 million for houses situated along the water or beside the golf courses of one of the new country clubs.

There’s another side to Rockwall, a folksy place with an old downtown square, a town hall, antique shops and local offices. There are older country homes and new subdivisions in a rural setting, with winding roads, cows and barns.

“We have horses, dogs, cats and rabbits. The kids are in the 4-H Club. This is still very much the country, but there is a lot of building going on,” says Byrd, looking out of the back door of their new home at farm land as far as the eye can see.

Two years ago the Byrds sold their farmhouse for $100,000 and built a stone house on 10 acres in an undeveloped area of Rockwall. Their children attend one of the four public elementary schools in Rockwall, whose district scores rank above the state and national averages.

“A lot of people come out here for the schools, to get away from the problems of the city,” says Phyllis Everett, a Rockwall real estate agent.

Housing prices started jumping in the past five years, moving up from an average selling price of $114,700 in “91 to $128,000 in “92. The foreclosure inventory has dried up and the construction boom of a few years ago has slowed considerably, says Everett.

For most of the Rockwall residents, a slowdown in growth is good news. They wince at the mention of construction on 1-30. which has bottled up Dallas-bound traffic for almost a year. “That’s a downside to living in Rockwall,” says Byrd. “Bui you can get more land for your money, and once the inter-slate is finished, the drive to Dallas will only take 30 minutes. Bui don’t tell people thai. We want to keep Rockwall a secret.”

Taking Back Northwood Hills

Say North Dallas and the first image is of affluent living, far from the rundown neighborhoods, crime and poverty thai plague pans of the inner city. That’s what the families in Northwood Hills thought when they settled in the upper middle-class and middle class neighborhoods near the intersection of Spring Valley and Coit Road just north of LBJ.

But something happened. The sprawling apartment complexes in the area between Central Expressway and Coit deteriorated. Tenants went from upwardly mobile to a mix of working poor and many single-parent households with latchkey children.

Several neighborhoods make up the Northwood Hills area, but the two most affected by the change in the apartments’ population were Northwood Hills Estates and Spring Valley. Northwood Hills as a whole is bounded by Coit, Preston. Bell Line and Spring Valley. Homes ranging in price from $100,000 to $450,000 shared the same general area as apartments with some of the lowest income levels in Dallas.

“This had always been a very stable, solid area. Then the demographics changed and suddenly we had poverty in North Dallas,” says Janis Dumas, a homeowner in the area for 25 years.

As the influx of crime into the area became more apparent and property values began to decline, some homeowners moved out. Others dug in their heels and began discussing solutions.

“Then things started really getting bad-crimes that were front-page stories. We couldn’t believe it was going on right across the street,” says Dumas. “There were gangs roaming the area. We knew we had to do something fast”

Three years ago the homeowners formed the Neighborhood Service Council, Inc. (NSCI). They persuaded the city to set up a police storefront in the area. They organized both a free afterschool program at Spring Valley Methodist Church for latchkey children and a free all-day camp dining the summer.

“The kids had no place to go. They were getting into trouble,” says Dumas, who was key in founding the NSCI. The neighbors solicited area businesses for donations and volunteers to help with the program.

Dr. Garry Bounds, a veterinarian whose business has been in the Northwood Hills area since 1972. is a volunteer tutor for the program. “What is unique is that the people didn’t run away from the problems. Sure the neighborhood was losing value. But we pulled together and did something about it,” Bounds says. “This area was too important to us to just bail out and avoid the problem.”

Currently the afterschool program provides counselors, tutors, computers and planned activities for more than 200 latchkey children. During the week kids get a free lunch, and in the evening English as a second language classes are held for adults. The summer camp has grown to 250 teens, according to Dumas, who says the change in the area has been dramatic since die inception of the NSCI.

“Six months before the program got started, the police estimated eight different gangs were in the neighborhood. Now there are none,” says Dumas. “You see kids playing basketball in the afternoon. You don’t hear about drive-by shootings or vandalism anymore.”

The NSCI programs have helped stabilize the housing values in the area, according to real estate agents. Martha Morguloff, with Ebby Halliday, says the Spring Valley/Coit area lost considerable value in the last few years, but is beginning to recover in both price and sales activity. Homes in Spring Valley sell for $60,000 to S150,000. Homes in Northwood Estates sell for as much as $400,000. “They sell in a shorter period and we have multiple contracts on them,” says Morguloff, who reports that in the last 18 months 43 homes in the area have sold, compared to 21 homes in the 18 months prior. “It was very flat two years ago. 1 think the latchkey kid programs have had a very positive impact on the neighborhood.”



Glen Oaks: We Can Live Togeth

Last year, when state Sen. Eddie Bemice Johnson spoke at a meeting of the Glen Oaks Home Owners Association, she cited the Oak Cliff neighborhood as evidence that racially and economically mixed areas are alive and well in Dallas County. Residents would agree.

“Before I moved here I heard it was a mixed area, but it wasn’t until I lived here that 1 realized how unique it is, particularly in Dallas,” says Arnold Hider, executive director of the Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation of Dallas and a homeowner in Glen Oaks for 10 years. “You have the sense that neighbors here take care of each other. There is no racial conflict. Everyone waves and talks. There’s ongoing communication,” he says.

Glen Oaks is a hilly, tree-filled neighborhood between Ledbetter, Polk Street, West Redbird Lane and 1-35. The homes lining the wide streets range from traditional to contemporary and run between $90,000 to $150,000. The racial mix is about two-thirds African-American and one-third white, but it didn’t start out this way. When the homes were built here in the late 1940s, the residents were white, upper middle-class.

“We moved here in 1953, when it was all white. Gradually black families started moving into Glen Oaks,” says Marion McCullough. “A lot of people were upset. Many left, but a lot of us stayed. This was our home.”

When Ann Dickey moved into Glen Oaks in 1977, the neighborhood was in transition. “It was going through white flight. Then things just settled down and the neighbors started to develop a good rapport,” she says.

Key in pulling the neighborhood together was the Glen Oaks Homeowners Association, formed in 1984. Faced with issues of zoning for apartments, Glen Oaks neighbors petitioned the City Planning Commission, wrote letters, formed a phoning committee and circulated fliers to all the neighbors. More than 200 Glen Oaks residents went by bus on three different occasions to City Hall to oppose a ruling that would allow a massive apartment complex to be constructed in the neighborhood.

“We filled the chamber each time, and it worked. We stopped the zoning change,” says Dickey. “I think the Homeowners Association created a sense of community.”

“This is a real people’s neighborhood,” says Barbara Smith, real estate broker and resident of Glen Oaks for more than eight years. She believes one sign of the stability is the low rate of turnover and the low number of foreclosures. ’’Values here dropped no more than in most other areas of Dallas in the last few years, but what we haven’t seen is a lot of For Sale signs in the yard,” she says. “People who move here stay.”



A Common Cause in Love Field West

Next door to Love Field Airport, almost completely surrounded by industrial and commercial areas, sits a close-knit, middle-income neighborhood-Love Field West. This mostly Hispanic area, bounded by Harry Hines, Burbank, Denton Road. Empire Central and Love Field, is home to more than 6,000 residents who fight an ongoing battle to maintain their neighborhood stability.

At issue is the talk of repealing the Wright Amendment. “If the amendment is repealed, and there is an increase in air traffic, it will dramatically affect our neighborhood,” says Rudy Longoria chairman of the Love Field Wes Neighborhood Association.

A resident of the area since 1959 Longoria remembers what it was like be fore D/FW Airport was built. “We hac horrible noise problems and things were always falling out of the sky-parts of airplanes, spilled fuel. Women knew not to hang laundry in the yard because it might get soiled. I remember seeing the FAA station wagon driving around, picking up pieces that fell off the airplanes,” he says, adding that this was minor compared to the fear of planes crashing into homes.

“Now it is controlled. It is not a problem,” he says. “We have a stable, pleasant neighborhood, and the neighbors here feel strongly about keeping it that way.” He says the community works closely with and is constantly after the city to get things done. “It’s one of the reasons families stay here and their kids come back to raise their families here.”

Love Field West was a rural area until about 45 years ago when it was annexed to Dallas. It was known as the Brookfield Addition. Homes started going up in the late ’40s, but the neighborhood began to take off in the ’50s, as Czech, German and Italian families built homes here. In the late ’60s several Filipino and Hispanic families moved in. Today it is about 60 percent Hispanic. Many of the residents are homeowners, with homes from $30,000 to $80,000.

“I’ve lived here all my life,” says Cynthia Salinas Dooley. a teacher. “All the old neighbors I knew growing up are still around, but there have been a slew of new families moving in the last few years.” She is proud of the strong sense of commitment the neighbors have toward their area. “People here are very involved in the schools and the churches. The parents keep in close touch with the teachers. They know what is going on at Obadiah Knight [elementary school],” she says.

The church considered the most closely associated with Love Field West is Our Lady of Perpetual Help, which is involved in such programs as the current effort to get the city to build a recreation center in the neighborhood

“Several neighborhood leaders met with City Councilman Chris Luna to discuss the rec center and other things concerning the infrastructure in our area,” says Dooley. “I noticed there was a translator there to make sure the people who only speak Spanish could understand. This is very important to all of us-that the old and the new neighbors, the bilingual and the monolingual, feel involved. It keeps the neighborhood going.”