DALLAS — According to www.dallasnews.com, the Dallas City Council will vote this month to determine if Jim’s Car Wash at 2702 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. has an “adverse effect” on the surrounding properties.
The carwash is located on a high-crime stretch of the street, the article continued, and council member Kevin Felder made it clear at a Public Safety and Criminal Justice meeting on Oct. 8th that he wants it gone.
Felder referred to that area as the “wild, wild west on MLK.”
The carwash sits in one of 31 areas that the Dallas police call crime hotspots, and of the carwash itself, police have described it as “a high-crime area known for the sale and use of illegal narcotics” and a “high drug and violent crime location in which individuals congregate at the location to traffic narcotics.”
The dispute has been a long, ongoing battle, the article noted; in 2004, the city deemed the carwash a public nuisance and argued in a lawsuit that the owners should have done more to deter crime there.
Owner Dale Davenport said he bought the property in the 1990s, and that since then, the area has been rezoned into one that doesn’t allow carwashes, the article stated.
If the Board of Adjustment decides the carwash does have an adverse effect on the area, Davenport could receive a deadline by which to make the property comply with the zoning requirements, meaning he could no longer operate the carwash unless he asked for a zoning change.
“You can drive down MLK at any hour of the night, and you will see 20, 30, 40 cars on that parking lot, at 1, 2, 3 o’clock in the morning,” Felder said at the meeting. “I can’t find one person — not one — in support of this carwash to remain.”
Davenport defended his business’ right to exist and claimed that it is doing well, although he did not dispute the fact that it is in a high-crime area, the article reported.
Davenport claimed that the carwash is the best-lit business on the street and that he has a high-definition camera mounted nearby that the Dallas Police Department has access to, the article noted.
He has even worked with police to disperse trespassers and loiterers at the carwash, the article added.
“This is not about crime; this is about taking my land,” Davenport said.
Dallas Police Association President Mike Mata said that Jim’s Car Wash has been actively trying to deter crime, the article continued.
“As long as the business owner is working with the department to fulfill the promises and expectations they expect of him, he’s the owner of a property, the owner of a business — you can’t just in this country shut people down because you don’t like what they do,” Mata said.
Davenport said he felt blindsided by the meeting and had “no idea what the city of Dallas had planned for him.”
Read the original article here.
