Town torn
over Perot Jr.'s development plans
"A rich developer arrives in
a small town in Texas. In a sense, his real estate
company tries to destroy the town in order to save it.
One man leads the charge against him..."
WESTLAKE (AP) - Ross Perot Jr.'s
2,600-acre ranch near Dallas boasts rolling pastures,
ponds, an old-fashioned ranch house and bison grazing
in the warm Texas sunshine.
The casualties so far: the mayor,
ousted from office, and the town itself, shorn of 70
percent of its land with the defections of Perot and
other unhappy landowners.
At the heart of the fight is,
perhaps inevitably, development of the scenic
property, the last big tract of raw land in a rapidly
suburbanizing area bounded on the west by Perot's own
Alliance Airport development and on the east by
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Perot's companies, Hillwood and
Alliance, want to build a mall, hundreds of homes,
more than 10,000 apartments and maybe even a sports
arena for Perot's Dallas Mavericks basketball team.
They want to divert tens of millions of dollars in
sales-tax revenues to utilities and roads, and they've
sought blanket zoning approval for unspecified
projects.
But Fort Worth lawyer and Westlake
resident Scott Bradley is among those who want Perot
to build less on the property and to use his own money
for infrastructure projects.
Bradley was mayor until April 29,
three days before town elections, when he was booted
from office at what he contends were invalid
proceedings orchestrated by four Perot backers on the
town's five-member board of aldermen.
''It's only explainable in terms of
the Perot ego and need to control things,'' says
Bradley, elected mayor of the 250-person
seven-square-mile suburb in 1994. He has gone to court
to have his dismissal overturned and could be
reinstated as early as today.
But Perot spokesman Geren - who now
runs a public relations firm called Public Strategies
Inc. - says Bradley and Perot had worked out most of
their differences and that the mayor's ouster had
nothing to do with the Circle T.
''You've got four aldermen, I guess,
representing the old-timers that hate what Mayor
Bradley has done to the town and want him out,'' Geren
says. ''I challenge anyone to find a connection
between what those aldermen have done and Mr. Perot.''
Maybe, but thanks to those aldermen
- one of whom, Carroll Huntress, is a tenant on Perot
property - the developer will certainly face fewer
problems doing what he wants with his land.
On Friday, the same four Westlake
aldermen who dismissed Bradley disannexed about 3,000
acres of land, including the Circle T, releasing it
from Westlake's control.
On Saturday, Perot's 2,660 acres
were absorbed by Fort Worth at an emergency meeting of
the City Council. Fort Worth, which likely will end up
annexing the property eventually, has been friendly to
Perot's past requests for zoning and tax breaks at his
Alliance Airport development.
The disannexations left Westlake, an
enclave of affluent ranch dwellers established in
1956, in the shape of a gerrymandered doughnut, the
hole left by the scenic ranch once owned by Dallas
oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt.
''I don't even recognize it,'' said
Steve Thornton, whose father was born in a house in
then-unincorporated Westlake in 1917.
Hear the show about the WESTLAKE
- Ross Perot saga on "This
American Life."
Can You Fight City Hall ... If
You Are City Hall? Just in time for the July 4th
holiday, we bring you stories of a typically American
kind of hero: the person who stands up alone for
what's right, and damn the consequences. In one story,
a rich developer arrives in a small town in Texas. In
a sense, his real estate company tries to destroy the
town in order to save it. One man leads the charge
against him. And other stories. Broadcast the weekend
of June 30-July 2 in most markets, or available here
via RealAudio sometime after the holiday next week.
From "This
American Life" (search for "westlake")
(click
here to hear the story) Can You Fight City Hall If
You Are City Hall?
June 30, 2000
Episode 163
Related Links:
Everything's
functioning in Westlake
From Can
You Fight City Hall ... If You Are City Hall?
(6/30/00):
Before
Ross Perot, Jr, ... and after
... in Westlake, TX.
Welcome
to the online home of the Town of Westlake, Texas.
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