‘Wolves are at our door.’ East Fort Worth residents confront tree removal, housing boom
Sporting his Lorax hat and a bright orange “I Speak For The Trees” T-shirt, Daniel Serralde is hard to miss. For the startup founder and former chief of staff to the Dallas County Republican Party, that notoriety is by design.
Serralde, who lives in the John T. White neighborhood in east Fort Worth, frequently inspects construction sites to monitor their progress. When he parks outside neighbors’ homes, they can easily recognize him as “the tree guy” keeping an eye on developers.
“We need to try and preserve as much of the canopy as we can for future generations and for health benefits,” Serralde said in late April, as he looked out over a tract of land that will become Mockingbird Estates. “We are going to be seeing Fort Worth grow amazingly over the next few years, and some difficult choices definitely need to be made.”
Serralde is far from the only resident concerned about the number of homes being built in the city’s eastern section, leading to massive tree removal by developers like D.R. Horton, LGI and most recently Huffines Communities, which is building Mockingbird Estates. Since construction began in earnest this spring, Huffines has cleared acres of trees to make room for 465 homes near the intersection of Williams and Lowery roads.
“There’s a better way to do this,” said Serralde, who started a petition calling for tree preservation in the area. “Trees increase property values, and at the end of the day, City Hall wants to collect more taxes. A reasonable compromise can be achieved.”
City officials told the John T. White Neighborhood Association that tree removal at the Huffines site was permitted through Fort Worth’s urban forestry department, and that inspectors visited the site weekly during the clearing stages, according to James Hook, the association’s vice president.
That hasn’t stopped neighbors from scrutinizing each step of the process, and getting involved as developers take their plans to the city’s zoning commission. Last month, the commission denied Huffines’ request to rezone a property for townhomes in the nearby Bentley Village-Waterchase Estates neighborhood amid divided opinions from residents.
The developer can legally move forward with plans to build an apartment complex, a proposal that nearly all residents opposed, according to The Fort Worth Report. Devin Huffines, son of gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines, did not comment on urban forestry requirements beyond stating that the developer “will be planting trees to replace the significant trees.”
Homebuyers are drawn to the area’s historic forest in the Cross Timbers region, which is home to native species like the drought-resistant post oak. But current residents worry that Fort Worth’s population boom and increasing demand for housing could wipe out what’s left of the region’s tree canopy, Hook said. Current residents would rather see the addition of amenities like sit-down restaurants and multi-use developments, he added.
“This is one of the last natural forests in Fort Worth, and the neighbors have just seen a lot of this land go to small lots, with lots and lots of houses that take up a lot of land,” Hook said. “It’s pretty devastating when you see that many trees going down at one time.”
Changes to Fort Worth tree ordinance approved
Tree clearing has been a major issue in east Fort Worth since the early 2000s, said councilwoman Gyna Bivens, who has represented District 5 since 2013. Several incidents increased public awareness of how developers handled tree removal, including flooding issues alongside deforested development sites in 2018. But the incident that earned the most public scrutiny was D.R. Horton’s violations of Fort Worth’s ordinance that same year.
The Arlington-based developer apologized to city officials for going “too far” in clearing more than 70% of existing tree canopy from a development site in east Fort Worth, right off Randol Mill Road.
“We sincerely regret the over-clearing that has occurred,” Mark Allen, a principal and vice president of D.R. Horton, said at the time. “In a couple of places, we went too far. It’s hurt us publicly. We are sorry for the mistake that occurred. We just want to make it right and move on.”
The company avoided a possible $1.5 million fine by agreeing to plant many more replacement trees than required by the tree preservation ordinance. The developer is no stranger to scrutiny in North Texas, including in Azle, where homeowners are demanding that D.R. Horton pay for damages to their properties after issues with construction dust and mud.
To Bivens, D.R. Horton’s avoidance of a fine in 2018 was a “slap on the wrist” that would not deter other developers from violating the rules. The ordinance faced scrutiny from environmental advocates in March after 20 “significant” trees were removed at the Waterside development, causing an arborist to warn of dire consequences for wildlife and flood control.
Last month, City Council members approved an amendment to the urban forestry ordinance to “strengthen our ability to levy civil penalties” for violations, according to a May 11 staff report by Fort Worth’s development services department.
Those changes include the ability to issue criminal and civil citations when there are violations of the ordinance, including when trees are removed that were not previously permitted by Fort Worth officials. Fines cannot exceed $500 due to state limits, but the removal of each tree would be counted as a separate offense.
The amendment also gives developers a chance to appeal the civil penalties in front of the City Council, who will then determine what happens next. No work can be done on site until the civil penalty is paid or the case is resolved at a council meeting, according to the staff report.
For Bivens, these changes eliminate the opportunity for homebuilders and other developers to make “backdoor deals” to reduce their fines or avoid penalties altogether.
“I think that will allow the City Council to impose greater accountability,” Bivens said. “The devastation that happens to us on the east side with our trees is not just limited to us. You see it in all neighborhoods where you have a lot of trees. For whatever reason, we have developers who don’t have the same type of regard for this as we do.”
Calls for more preservation, better enforcement
While residents acknowledge that east Fort Worth will continue to be a hotspot for homebuilders, Bivens wants the city to identify opportunities to preserve forest whenever possible. Those efforts could come through the city’s Open Space Conservation program, which launched last year with the acquisition of the Broadcast Hill property near the Meadowbrook neighborhood.
In December, the parks department purchased about 24 acres of land from Fort Worth ISD with plans to absorb the tract into Cobblestone Trail Park, according to Lori Gordon, a planning manager for the department.
“The property preserves a portion of the Cross Timbers forest,” Gordon wrote in an email. “The parcel provides an age-diverse population of post oaks and a mix of other species including blackjack oak, live oak, eastern red cedar, rusty blackhaw, eastern redbud, sugarberry and mesquite for the residents of the City to observe and enjoy.”
Hook and Bivens, who worked together to rezone the John T. White neighborhood into larger plots in hopes of preserving more trees, have a long list of ideas for how city officials could improve its enforcement of tree removal penalties.
The city’s urban forestry ordinance requires developers to create preservation or mitigation plans when they remove “significant trees,” Rochelle Joseph, Fort Worth’s assistant director of development services, told the Star-Telegram in March. Fines for removing significant trees — classified as any tree with a diameter greater than 27 inches or 18 inches for post oaks or blackjack oaks — are assessed when a developer clears them without authorization, according to Fort Worth’s ordinance.
Hook would like to see more thorough evaluations of which trees are on any given development site so that developers are encouraged to maintain older trees rather than shrubs to meet the 25% preservation requirement.
While the development services department is often understaffed, Bivens has advocated for cross-training of code compliance workers so more staff have the knowledge necessary to issue citations. She also wants Fort Worth to explore the use of drones to monitor tree clearing at a faster pace than is possible with traditional inspections.
“I’ll be pushing for that, and they know I won’t stop complaining until we get some action,” Bivens said. “We’ve got to get some help on our trees from city staff, and you’ll always hear that we don’t have enough staff. Well, let’s use technology.”
The most important element, she and Hook agree, is public awareness and vigilance. Hook and his fellow neighborhood leaders maintain an engaged Facebook group posting updates about zoning applications and meetings they take with developers.
Association members have been approached many times by companies seeking to build industrial warehouses, not the grocery stores, sit-down restaurants or mixed-use developments that neighbors desperately want, Hook said.
“We have a lot of land up here, and the wolves are at our door,” Hook said. “They want it, and we want to maintain the zoning that we have, that we worked on years ago. We’re happy with where it is now, and so anybody that comes in and wants to do something different, that’s where we’ll fight ‘em.”
