Cedar Hill Loop 9 meeting gets emotional

by Steve Snyder of Cedar Hill TODAY

Hundreds of people from Cedar Hill and several Ellis County cities dropped by or attended a Loop 9 information meeting in Cedar Hill April 23.

Texas Department of Transportation officials provided information on the current status of Loop 9, which is in the middle of undergoing a federal Draft Environmental Impact Statement. TxDOT's Tom Nesbitt said that review is expected to be done sometime this summer, with not too much specificity as to completion date.

As to when work might start on the loop, which was first put on the drawing board back in the 1950s, TxDOT's has said that the project could be started about 2013, with the road not likely to be open until after 2020.

Some residents from Lancaster, or unincorporated areas between Lancaster and Wilmer or Hutchins, wanted to know if the loop was being pushed in conjunction with the development of the Dallas Logistics Hub by The Allen Group. Nesbitt said no, pointing out that the current phase of Loop 9 location study work began in the mid-1990s.

The greater Dallas Planning Council first identified the concept of an outer loop freeway around the Dallas Metroplex in 1964. In 1968, the Texas Highway Commission authorized this outer loop around Dallas and designated it as part of what became known as Loop 9. The Loop 9 Feasibility and Route Alignment Study was authorized in 1995.

After that, homeowners and landowners in the area asked more specific questions.

A number of area residents thought TxDOT would try to lowball them on their home values, asked if the agency would pay them based on purchase price, or on current value.

TxDOT's Travis Henderson covered that topic extensively.

“The law requires us to offer fair market value,” Henderson said. “We would contract with independent appraisers, and we would encourage homeowners to meet with appraisers.

Henderson said people would be compensated for the value of the land, value of improvements and loss of land.

He was then asked about businesses.

“By law, we can't compensate for business income, but we do pay relocation expenses,” he said.

One an appraisal is complete, a property owner can either accept the appraisal, or file a protest. TxDOT then reviews the protest. It may not adjust the appraisal at all, it may adjust it, but not much as the protesting property owner seeks, or it may adjust it that much. If, under the first or second occurrences, the property owner still disagrees, then the eminent domain process starts.

In the back of the room, at a table, Cecil Saldana explained more of the appraisal process.

TxDOT would contract with one or more independent appraisers for Loop 9 right-of-way. A second appraiser would then review those appraisals.

That said, worries about slumping home values may be overstated. Information on first-quarter home sales throughout the Metroplex show that the average price on Cedar Hill home sales rose 6 percent in the first quarter of this year, while Ellis County prices rose 8 percent.

Other people asked about right-of-way width. Nesbitt explained that the road would need about 450 feet of width in straight areas, and possibly as much as 600 in curves.

Other people in attendance suggested developing more public transportation. At this time, neither Cedar Hill nor Lancaster is a Dallas Area Rapid Transit member city, and DART doesn't extend into Ellis County. The North Central Texas Council of Governments' Regional Transportation Council has long discussed light-rail lines leading south from Dallas to Midlothian and Waxahachie; however, neither of those would address the primarily east-west focus of Loop 9 traffic.

The bottom line, though, as Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price noted, is for many of the people, it's the bottom-line fact that their houses or land, and not somebody else's, are in the currently proposed Loop 9 alignment.

TxDOT estimates about 400 properties will be affected by the road, but worried homeowner groups claim the number is closer to 1,200. Whether the difference is due to TxDOT's narrowing the right-of-way from an old proposal of 1,200 feet, or something else, was not clear.

“It doesn't matter where you put it. You're going to have this kind of rancor to some degree,” said Price.

And rancor there was.

While the vast majority of people who stayed around for most of TxDOT's presentation, some people talked over Nesbitt or Henderson's presentations, such as making comments of apparent disbelief while they were speaking.

Other people seemed to support one citizen speaker's contention that local officials were all “moles” of the Council of Governments, whose members are nominated by local cities and school boards. That comment drew the ire of the normally low-key Cedar Hill Mayor Rob Franke, who said the comment was “out of line.”