Click To Enlarge PhotoThere is a brand new home on Kenwood. What makes that news is that it's in the Greenland Hills NSO. You know, the same kind of NSO that The Others say will keep the builders from wanting houses in our neighborhood. The Greenland Hills NSO was enacted on March 28th, 2007. This home, the one you see in the picture above, was built by J. Gregory Homes. According to Dallas Central Appraisal District property records, J. Gregory Homes bought this property on 7/25/2007 (click on this link and see the deed transfer date on the data for 2007). That's four months after the NSO was enacted. It's hard to imagine that they didn't know they were buying in an NSO neighborhood. J. Gregory Homes sold the home on 9/8/2008. That's 13 months and a few days from start of project to finish.
Now, J. Gregory Homes is a very successful new construction custom home builder here in Dallas. They specialize in buying older homes, scraping the lot and building newer, larger homes in their place. For example, they built 4124 Santa Barbara, at 3,469 square feet, and 4306 Santa Barbara, at 3,512 square feet.
Much like this home on Kenwood. It is 3,419 square feet. It was built after the NSO was enacted and it meets all of the requirements of the NSO. The Greenland Hills NSO is, in many ways, like the one proposed for University Terrace. In some areas, it is even stricter than what is being proposed for our neighborhood. Greenland Hills has a minimum front yard setback of 33 feet. Ours is about the same, but it's not part of the NSO. It turns out that the setback requirement was established when our neighborhood was built. Greenland Hills has a 20 ft height plane restriction, and that's what we're proposing for University Terrace as well. Greenland Hills has a garage placement requirement and it has a driveway entrance requirement. The UT proposal has neither of those.
In fact, this exact home could be built right here in University Terrace within the guidelines of the proposed NSO.
If this doesn't prove that successful builders are willing and able to work with an NSO, I don't know what does. The Other Side wants to enflame everyone with their "opinion" that no one will want our houses.
Wrong.
So, now, who says builders won't want to buy your house? Responsible builders who make an effort to build to scale will be very interested in our neighborhood. But what they won't be able to do is build something like what they built next door to our Santa Barbara neighbors Julie Walters & Eric Van Steenburg. See the next blog article to read their story.
By the way, that house next to them is 4,245 square feet according to DCAD.
In your last post you complained about a 3400 square foot house that was towering over its neighbor on Santa Barbara now you are touting the wonderfulness of a 4500 square footage home in Greenland Hills.
ReplyDelete1 - this Greenland Hills home is not a 2-story it is a 1.5 story.
2 - this argument is not about square footage. Its about Property Rights. What you are doing is placing deed restrictions on my property that I don't want. It should require 100% approval. Not a group of uninformed and scared of change residents who secretly tried to change something by avoiding the other argument. Not once was I informed on any meetings. Not once was my argument heard.
Did you purposely avoid my house with the meeting information? Because I never got anything. Or maybe it was conveniently left of the mailing because according to the city my lot is blocked off in your "list of homes" I consider that a little questionable.
OH and go to http://noutnso.blogspot.com to get the real answer
Dijea - gosh, where to start? Oh yes, I remember. This is the last of your posts that I'm going to publish without a name. I require that of everyone else, even those with nice things to say. I made an exception for you back when you were pretty much the only one running your Against blog. But it occurred to me that I don't even know for sure if YOU live here.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, you have your "facts" mixed up. I was touting the +3400 sf home in the Greenland Hills NSO as an example of what a builder can do in an NSO neighborhood, and the people next door to the +4200 sf Garage Mahal were complaining about it being way too big and out of scale for the lot and the neighborhood.
The house on Kenwood is listed as a 1.5 storey, just like the house on Santa Barbara is listed as a 2 storey, even though we can see a third storey window in the photo at the bottom of that blog post. It's +3400 sf. It's plenty big, wouldn't you say?
Your refrain about property rights: When has anything ever required 100% approval. I assume you grew up in this country, and had to take Civics in school. Show me one example of your 100% rule. Just one.
You claim that you were never once informed of any meetings. You must be the most incurious person on earth not to have heard that in the last 18 months there's been an NSO going on. Do you not read the mail delivered to your home?
The diagram you received from the city showed the homes that had voted for, against, and no vote. I assume your home would be marked no vote since you claim you were never contacted by anyone. There's no grand conspiracy here, Dijea. The fact that you have that information, that it was given to the city by residents who collected it as part of the NSO process and made public information, free for the asking, would indicate to most anyone not completely biased or paranoid that there's no conspiracy going on.
I mean, it's sort of like you finally got off your computer and went to the city - or someone went for you - and asked, "what have you got on the UT NSO", and they broke out with all this information that's been collected and made public by volunteers working through this NSO process. Finally, after 18 months of this UT NSO folder with the City getting fatter and fatter, you and your friends go down, like three days before the mail vote and ask for all this information.
And because it wasn't hand delivered to you, someone who has made no effort until April 1st, 2009 - when you started this blog - to have any input into this process, you're ready to claim that it's all highly suspicious because your home is "blocked off" on one of the forms that was freely submitted to the City, yet you don't want anyone to know your name or where you live...
Huh?
The thing that's so sad is that you want so badly to be right about all this that you can look at those two photos of those houses - one of a 3400 sf home that fits on it's lot and blends with the neighborhood and one that dwarfs the houses around it and compels the neighbors to put up for sale signs - and not see any difference.
It isn't about property rights. It's about Dijea and her friends being right.
Also,
ReplyDeleteI want to point out that they had to stop construction for a few weeks on the Kenwood house. It turns out the builder wasn't aware of the restrictions and had to tear off the original roofline. So, the builder did have something a bit taller in mind.
To clarify, it is a full two story house.