UPDATE: REZONING ARLINGTON HEIGHTS
Important information from the ARLINGTON HEIGHTS NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION
WE NEED YOUR HELP! We need your emails and your phone calls and your presence at the next City Council meeting. Please, help us help you.
On January 12 at 7pm, the City Council will vote on re-zoning approximately 1,000 properties in Arlington Heights per the recommendation of the City’s Zoning Commission.
Please send an email TODAY to our Councilman Carter Burdette at District7@fortworthgov.org and/or by calling him at 817-392-8807 and let him know you support ZC-09-116 (emails or letters are required as the “official” document). Sample emails/letters are included at the end of this email.
Most property owners in our neighborhood are not aware that many of the single family homes in Arlington Heights are zoned to allow for duplex construction which makes our neighborhood a target for teardowns by speculative builders. Additionally, misaligned zoning adversely compromises the integrity of our valuable community and hinders your property rights and your neighbor’s rights.
The goal for us all is simple: protect the integrity of Arlington Heights by aligning on-ground zoning with current uses. We are striving to protect our neighborhood and ensure that the investments our property owners have made in their homes are protected. Specifically, AHNA is working with the City to ensure the following:
• Blocks that are primarily used as single family should be zoned A5/Single Family
• Blocks that are primarily used for duplexes should be zoned B/Duplex.
• Areas where we have apartment complexes should be properly zoned C/Multifamily.
The impact this rezoning has on your property, on OUR neighborhood, is a positive impact. You are not losing your rights to your property, but simply GAINING the rights that many of you thought you had already. Living in a neighborhood of single family homes, not a neighborhood that will be encroached on by developers looking to maximize every inch of space on a lot or subdividing those lots further to build even more housing units on them.
We have heard it time and time again, residents asking why the single family house next door to them was allowed to be redeveloped as a multi-family dwelling. Sometimes the impact is minimal, but other times residents wonder where their morning sun has gone. We have been asked if zoning impacts property values – according to the City’s Zoning Department, zoning does not impact property values. In fact, neighborhoods north of Camp Bowie (and other areas throughout Fort Worth) that have undergone Council-initiated rezoning have seen a dramatic increase in property values and many of them credit proper zoning for this increase stating that it helped to limit incongruent speculative development, protected the aging infrastructure, and encouraged homeownership. All of this naturally promotes more desirable, livable communities.
Thanks to countless residents and nearly 10 years of experience in block-by-block rezoning Arlington Heights has successfully rezoned more than half of our nonconforming properties. We learned in our 2009 Roundtable and Online Poll that preserving our current single-family housing stock was high on the list of neighborhood concerns.
The AHNA Executive Committee as well as the AHNA Zoning Committee believes that this rezoning is a proactive approach to rectify land use issues our neighborhood has confronted for years. This initiative will allow our residents, with the help of the City’s Zoning Department, to correct the remainder of misaligned zoning within our boundaries.
If you have any questions about this petition, or to see if your home is impacted, please call the City’s Zoning department at 817-392-8028 and reference ZC-09-116. You can also reference the notice in the December 29 Fort Worth Star Telegram which identifies all addresses impacted by this Council-initiated rezoning effort. You are also welcome to contact Dave Marshall, AHNA zoning chair, at zoning@99.198.97.170 to discuss the rezoning effort as it impacts the Arlington Heights neighborhood.
Again, AHNA is asking YOU to please immediately contact Councilman Carter Burdette at District7@fortworthgov.org and/or by calling 817-392-8807 and express your SUPPORT for our dynamic, single family neighborhood.
Thank you.
SAMPLE LETTERS OF SUPPORT:
SAMPLE 1:
(Subject line should say “Support letter for ZC-09-116))
TO: Councilman Carter Burdette (district7@fortworthgov.org)
I own and live at LIST ADDRESS in Arlington Heights which is currently being used as a (SINGLE FAMILY/DUPLEX). I would like to express my support of ZC-09-116 to re-zone my HOME/BLOCK to its current use.
Thank you,
NAME
ADDRESS
TELEPHONE
SAMPLE 2:
DATE
Fort Worth City Council
Attn: Carter Burdette, District 7
Municipal Building
1000 Throckmorton St.
Fort Worth, TX 76102
Re: ZC-09-116, Council-Initiated Rezoning for Arlington Heights Neighborhood
Councilman Burdette,
I/we have lived in the Arlington Heights neighborhood for X years at ADDRESS.
I/we have been informed about this rezoning effort and am/are in agreement with it. This is a good thing for my/our block on STREET NAME and a good thing for the entire neighborhood too.
(Anything else that you might like to add here?….example: what you enjoy about of your block like it is mostly single families and you want to keep it that way OR I don’t want any new duplexes built on my block.)
Again, I/we support zoning case ZC-09-116.
Sincerely,
NAME
ADDRESS
TELEPHONE