Market Street, which was slated to come into Flower Mound is the ideal development. It is a unique type of grocery store (more of a experiential gourmet market than a Safeway) and ranked as one of the state's top employers. Everyone I know was excited to get Market Street.
Turns out that Market Street threated the "urban forest," whatever that is. This is prairie. The "cross timbers" oaks are scrubby, cruddy little trees that are hardly worth note (i.e., big weedy trees with acorns). The "urban forest" site of Market Street was a vacant lot with some scrubby trees, trash from high school kids' discarded beer cans, etc. It's an eyesore. It's got a convenience store to the left, strip center to the right, and department store across the street (all built before the envirocommies got control). This is 10 miles north of one of DFW Airport's runways. It is not Yosemite.
Info about the project is below...
http://www.worldtalkradio.com/show/382/resource/JCBUnlimited6x21_0119(2).pdf
Info about Market Street is below...
http://www.unitedtexas.com/our_stores/video/ColleyvilleTour.wmv
The impact of this is beyond what the idiots on the council imagine. For example, though I live in Flower Mound, my company is located one town over. It's a rapidly growing, job generating, taxpaying internet company that any community would want. Yet, my own town does not. So, the jobs and taxes will move the next town.
What applies at the local level, also applies in the world community. If we let the luddite commie wackos oppose economic growth under the guise of phony tree preservation or phony carbon reduction efforts, the growth will move to locales where it's welcomed.
Companies like mine will relocate to Aruba or the Cook Islands or somewhere with fewer taxes, less prairie, more beaches, and no Sarbanes Oxley.
Neohippies SUCK!
;-)
30+" diameter trees? Mere toothpicks. Bulldoze and pave it all. Concrete is beautiful.
/s/
Shhhh, you didn't hear it from me, but a copper nail discretely hammered into the root will take care of those trees for ya....
Doesn't sound like a very accurate description of a 31" diameter tree.
"Companies like mine will relocate to Aruba or the Cook Islands or somewhere with fewer taxes, less prairie, more beaches, and no Sarbanes Oxley."
This sounds like the exact opposite of where you want to relocate. You would be happier in a place with block after block of concrete buildings and parking lots.
texping
Couple of matches ought to help that urban forest.
Our town is like that too. The next town over has welcomed a movie theater, restaurants, condos and nice new businesses. They are thriving, great tax base, good schools.
Our community here puts up a stink even if a drive-through bagel shop wants to come in, hollered loudly (and spent $300K on a lawyer to fight) a nicely designed school in the foothills because it was 'Little Mouse' habitat (our cat loves the little mice) and a wildlife corridor. The school decided to put in HOMES on the hillside instead, hahah. Now they are trying to fight that. Still no tax revenue to pay all the lawyers they are hiring and fighting. I call it 'The Town that Time Forgot.'
We also belong to the local big city unified school district, much to our detriment. But no tax base to have our own schools. It is just disgusting.
Didn't about 70% of the "Peoples Republic of Flower Mound" vote for President Bush in the last election?
another "hoa gone bad" ... sigh!