Fort Worth city council kills auto shop in residential neighborhood
The Fort Worth City Council voted unanimously to prevent an auto shop from operating in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
The March 31 vote brings to a close a months-long saga that started when a city staffer mistakenly told Lewisville-based Fifth Gear Automotive it could operate at 3553 Loddick Lane.
The 2.15 acre parcel is in the Hutson Oaks neighborhood just north of the intersection of Alta Vista Road and West Keller Hicks Road.
“We didn’t really want to be here,” said zoning consultant Wes Hoblit, who represented Fifth Gear at Tuesday’s council meeting.
The city gave Fifth Gear a permit to operate in November 2025, but pulled it soon after opposition from nearby neighborhoods.
Neighbors started seeing Fifth Gear trucks showing up on the site, which led Eric Wilhite, vice president of the Hutson Oaks HOA and a trained city planner, to reach out to the city about the land use rules.
Wilhite told the council Tuesday it took six weeks of emailing back and forth before city staffers acknowledged the mistake.
“If we hadn’t kept pushing, Fifth Gear would be operating right now,” Wilhite said in an interview with the Star-Telegram after the council meeting.
He and other neighbors stressed that their opposition had nothing to do with Fifth Gear as a business. It was solely based on the land use.
The site is only accessible by roughly 30 foot neighborhood streets.
Kids play in the streets, and you always hear children laughing, Hutson Oakes homeowner Gary Dubas told the city council.
Having cars come through the neighborhood either to get to the shop or to do test drives to try and diagnose an engine noise would not be safe, he said.
Fifth Gear addressed resident concerns about traffic, noise, and safety, business director John Miller said in a March 30 email to the Star-Telegram.
The company has tried to be a good neighbor, but were told at a community meeting the only way to be a good neighbor would be to leave the neighborhood entirely, Miller said.
It’s not clear what the company plans to do now that its zoning change request was denied. Fifth Gear’s lawyers have advised them not to comment, Miller said in his March 30 email.
Representatives for Fifth Gear declined to comment when contacted by the Star-Telegram Tuesday.
This story was originally published March 31, 2026 at 4:48 PM.
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