After decades of neglect, a new wave of high-profile developments in West Dallas are threatening long-time residents with a different kind of environmental injustice: green gentrification.
For a long time, West Dallas was considered an impoverished, industrial wasteland a world away from the sophisticated skyline of downtown Dallas. Despite a long overdue environmental cleanup during the 1990s, it wasn’t until 2012 that it began to experience a dramatic change with the construction of a controversial Calatrava-designed bridge and an ensuing wave of development along the Trinity River in the form of luxury dining and retail spaces, upscale housing and green amenities that have attracted the city’s wealthier residents. But the promised economic benefits of all this investment is not reaching long-time residents of West Dallas, who instead are faced with the threat of rapidly rising real estate prices and the disruption of their formerly isolated cultural enclaves.
As part of the Trinity River Corridor Project aimed at “fostering unity across the north and south divide in the City”, Calatrava’s bridge was quickly dubbed—to the understandable dismay of its residents—as a bridge to nowhere. Five years later, however, that bridge seems to have put West Dallas on the map—but for whom? That is the question we should be asking as environmental improvements and projects including a 200-acre park backed by a 60 million dollar private donation—continue to transform West Dallas.
The Trinity River as seen from below the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. Photo by Helen Cole
From environmental injustice to broken promises
Described by many residents as an island, the area of West Dallas consists of many small neighborhoods situated directly across from downtown Dallas and is bordered by the Trinity River to the north and east, I-30 to the south, and the West Fork of the Trinity River to the west. Similar to other gentrifying neighborhoods across the U.S., it has a long history of environmental injustice, much of which is still unresolved. Once home to the nation’s largest public housing facility, many Mexican-American and black residents settled there due to the proximity of jobs and relatively low cost of living, leading to racial tensions and segregation still observed in the area. Its location on the banks of the river also made it prone to flooding, and partly due to its late incorporation into the city of Dallas in 1954, some neighborhoods still lack modern sewage systems, drainage, sidewalks and paved streets. Together, these factors created the conditions for a classic case of environmental racism and injustice, and the resulting lack of investment in the area ripened the risk for the gentrification processes it is experiencing today.
A man walks along Navaro Street in West Dallas. Photo by Allison V. Smith for Kera News
In addition to new bridges including the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge mentioned above, the current plan to transform the Trinity River also encompasses the expansive Harold Simmons park on the riverbank abutting the West Dallas neighborhoods of La Bajada and El Aceite, now in the design phase. Despite extensive outreach efforts, many residents are either unaware of the development, or skeptical that it will ever come to fruition, having been jaded by the city’s unfulfilled planning and infrastructure promises made as far back as the mid-1800s and as recently as 2017.
In the wake of historic environmental injustices spanning over half a century coupled with new pressures of gentrification, the question remains about who stands to benefit from the proposed Harold Simmons Park, or whether it may lead to further inequities.
West Dallas’ Trinity Groves Development. Photo via D Magazine
Identity and attractiveness are necessary for success
Author Harvey J. Graff writes that Dallas has long suffered from an identity crisis, with efforts to create an image for the city that extend beyond the tragic assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. Its complicated relationship with its own history has led to nicknames like “the city with no reason to be” and the “city with no limits”, due to its placement in the vastness of Texas without any clear geographical boundaries or a clear regional affiliation. Overtime, the city has fought to be competitive on the national and international stage by creating a business-friendly atmosphere. It now forms a major part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex home to over 10,000 Fortune 500 Companies, encouraging massive building trends but little comprehensive planning. In recent decades, Dallas lost a few notable competitions in this realm, including Boeing in 2001, the 2012 Olympic games, and most recently, the second Amazon headquarters.
It was ultimately these losses that sparked city leaders to re-examine the attractiveness of their city, and in several cases to propose quality of life improvements, including plans to construct new parks and improve connectivity between green spaces. Like the Harold Simmons Park, many of these plans have been backed by massive private donations, including the new the Katy Trail, which opened in 2000, the Klyde Warren Park downtown, which opened in 2012, and other proposals. Such projects tout their attractiveness firstly for international investors, potential new company headquarters, and regional visitors, and secondarily as a benefit for local residents.
New environmental injustice in the wake of gentrification
Since the opening of the bridge in 2012, vast changes such as the Trinity Groves development and many new luxury townhome developments remind residents that gentrification is underway. These developments and subsequent neighborhood improvements, many of which were long fought for by residents, have also led the community to feel excluded and ignored, sometimes by their own representatives. In one particularly salient example in 2015, the area’s former city councilperson voted to relocate the Argos concrete plant which had formerly stood at the base of the new bridge adjacent to what is now Trinity Groves, and also approved the allocation of 2.5 million dollars to build a rail spur to the new location in order to facilitate the move. Many residents were upset that instead of relocating the concrete plant to a non-residential area, it was pushed further into the neighborhood, directly behind a middle school and next to a superfund site of a former lead-smelting plant. Although the new plant has better technology that limits pollutants, the decision displays a disregard for the well-being of residents who have lived for generations with the burden of lead exposure. The school was closed two years later, but rather than for the unjust exposure of children to lead and other pollutants that the scenario clearly produces, the reason cited for its closure was poor performance.
The abandoned concrete plant lies adjacent to Trinity Groves, whose owners say it will cost over a million dollars to have it removed. Photo by Helen Cole
The former Thomas Edison School on the left, the new concrete plant on the right, and the former location of the lead smelting plant, now a superfund site, in the foreground. Photo by Helen Cole
Can the park benefit all residents?
In 2017, the Trinity Park Conservancy was established to oversee the design and implementation of the current Trinity River Corridor plan. Led by a well-known local architect and urban planner, it places community engagement and participation at the heart of the process, even hiring a community engagement associate. While many residents spoke of their admiration for the new organization and its staff, they also expressed disinterest in the park itself, some saying that they felt the park was not for them. In other cases, residents remained skeptical in keeping with the fate of past plans along the river.
Site of the future Harold Simmons Park, named after it’s benefactor, a Texas billionaire and philanthropist who made money in part through holdings in companies specializing in lead and other heavy metals, the same industries that polluted West Dallas. Photo by Helen Cole
The new Harrold Simmons park remains a question mark in the minds of residents. Those interviewed unanimously associated the observed onset of gentrification with the construction of that “bridge to nowhere”. As evidenced by the relative lack of engagement and interest among residents, the question of who benefits from the new park comes secondary, or tertiary, to their survival and struggle to maintain their vibrant communities in the face of imminent gentrification by development for new residents. This process runs parallel to the fight for necessary resources and infrastructure which the neighborhoods still lack. While new construction brings improvements to infrastructure, these largely benefit new construction and not the communities that have long suffered the consequences of environmental injustice.
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Main photo: View of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge connecting West Dallas to downtown. Photo via Advocate Oak Cliff
