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This year’s event will be held on Thursday July 4th from 9am to 11:30am. In the meantime, we need your help ensuring the event will be a success. To offer all the concessions and activities free of charge to our residents, we rely on sponsorships and volunteers. To find out more about what a $400 sponsorship gets your organization or company, please reach out to us. We also accept family donations! Our thanks to the sponsors and donations we have received so far:

• Ready Roofing & Solar
• Melinda Spence, Compass Real Estate
• Willard Cooling, Heating, Plumbing, Electrical
• Leslie Pulaski, Ebby Halliday Realtors
• Craig Henderson, NHHA Member
• Mitra Shamsa, Ebby Halliday Realtors
• Robin Burch, NHHA Member
• The Redpath Team, Allie Beth Allman
• Van Wunnik and Marcum, CPAs
• Traver Construction

We need volunteers for the morning of the 4th, starting as early as 6:30am, for numerous activities including setup, parade registration, judging, handing out concessions, supervising the kids games, and take-down. Please review the volunteer opportunities through this link and sign up if you can pitch in, even for just 30 minutes: Festival Volunteers. We could also use a few coolers, tables, and folding chairs. 

• UPDATE – The vote at Plan Commission will be delayed and not take place on June 20th, therefore we will postpone our community meeting until we know the new vote date. 

1. POSTPONED! TBD at the Dallas Bible Church (15765 Hillcrest Rd., Dallas, TX 75248) This meeting will provide a brief recap of the Pepper Square rezoning proposal and process, but it will primarily focus on organizing ourselves for the June 20th CPC meeting at Dallas City Hall. If you have strong feelings about the number of apartments proposed for Pepper Square, please attend this meeting.
2. POSTPONED! TBD at Dallas City Hall, in the Council Chambers (1500 Marilla Street, Dallas 75201) will be the CPC hearing and vote regarding Pepper Square. It’s important that as many residents as possible show up and speak at the hearing. There is an option to participate virtually, however; if at all possible, it’s much more impactful to be there in person.

Now is the time to write the City Plan Commissioners to let them know how you feel about the Pepper Square rezoning application. Please reference Zoning Case No. Z212-358. You can send just one email, but make sure to include all City Plan Commissions on the “to” line. Email addresses can be found here.  You can also copy the Secretary, Yolanda, whose email address is shown near the top of the page.  

The neighborhood’s concerns can be summarized as:

• Density – Henry S. Miller’s proposal includes a large number of apartments (equates to 100 apartments/acre). The east side of Preston Rd is almost entirely populated with single family residences. The west side of Preston Rd is (reasonably) densely populated with apartments and condos. There are more than 6,000 apartment/condo units in close proximity to Pepper Square, with hundreds of immediate vacancies. When Preston Del Norte and the area south of Alexis (which are already entitled) are developed, there will be thousands more units and vacancies. A shortage of apartments is not an issue in our area and a zoning change shouldn’t be approved for the purpose of adding more apartments in a single-family residential area. Furthermore, the level of density being proposed is unreasonable and out of character and scope even in the existing multi-family areas.
• Building Height – Henry S. Miller’s proposal calls for high-rise buildings (up to 12 stories tall). The east side of Preston Rd is almost entirely populated with single family residences. Multi-family in the general vicinity is in low-rise buildings. There is an outlier office building on the west side of Preston Rd that can be seen from nearby neighborhoods/backyards. The proposal includes high rise buildings on the east side of Preston that vastly differ from the existing makeup of the area.
• Traffic – The Preston & Belt Line Rd intersection is operating at an E or F rating at peak times. The majority of traffic at the intersection is from through-traffic. Adding residential to the site will increase the number of cars joining the already overflowing through-traffic numbers at morning and evening rush hour. Redevelopment under Community Retail would spread the vehicle trips throughout the day as opposed to clustering at the already busiest times.
• City Services – With the Preston Del Norte re-development potentially adding a net of 1,700+ units and the area south of Alexis potentially getting hundreds of units, the addition of thousands more at Pepper Square would put an even greater strain on city services. Residents are concerned about the effect this would have on utilities, fire department response, police response, and school population. Fire and police have confirmed that any additional resources allocated to the area couldn’t be done proactively. Response times would suffer before an additional rescue is added to Fretz Station 11, and before more personnel are hired to the North Central station. Additionally, Code Enforcement is not staffed to handle the already approved apartments (Preston Del Norte and Tonti) plus Henry S. Miller’s proposed multi-family dwelling units. The DISD school (Anne Frank) that would serve PS is already overcrowded.
• The proposed zoning change fundamentally alters the land use of Pepper Square shopping center – Pepper Square will no longer be a restaurant/shopping center that serves the surrounding community. Pepper Square could be transformed into a high-density mixed-use apartment complex, whose retail services and green space will primarily serve only those who live in Pepper Square. The neighborhood would be losing an amenity that had been serving the needs of the surrounding community.