Court Opinion

ID: 9762312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:19:28.255654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:31.942234
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION
The majority states that in this case, “The facts or particular circumstances are of extreme importance.” I agree. The most significant fact in the record is that the three lots given special zoning classification by the Council are completely surrounded by lots which have the most restrictive classification in the City of Austin, “ 'A’ Residence and First Height and Area.” These lots and this area have been so restricted since the basic zoning ordinance was first enacted by the City in 1941.
Two of the three lots involved are vacant lots. There are five other vacant lots in this area, the zoning classification of which was not altered. In my opinion, the ordinance here attacked is a classic example of “spot zoning,” and should be invalidated. I, therefore, respectfully dissent.
Some more of the undisputed facts will be recited:
The neighborhood is quiet, desirable, and distinctly residential. The homes are well improved and carefully maintained. Large elm trees and pecan trees in many places completely overhang the streets. The people who live there are for the most part connected with the University — either faculty (both active and retired) or graduate students. Many of the homeowners are University of Texas faculty members. Several of the residents testified that they purchased their homes recently because of the unusual residential desirability of the area.
San Pedro Street has a paving width of only 22 feet and a right-of way of only 30 *679feet. The City of Austin presently requires new residential streets to have a right of way of at least 50 feet. In medium and high density areas, such as the ordinance in issue places subject property, the minimum right of way required is 60 feet. San Pedro Street, dedicated many years ago, actually grew out of what was once an alley. The result is that traffic on it is already very crowded. Today’s cars average six feet, eight and one half inches wide. With cars parked on each side, there is left only a few inches of maneuvering space for a moving car. Cars parked on each side can block large vehicles such as fire trucks and garbage trucks.
One witness, Mr. Towery, an area homeowner, described the San Pedro traffic as follows:
“Q. Would you describe for us what you have observed about the traffic in the last year on San Pedro Street?
“A. It is very crowded; cars parked on both sides of the street, facing both directions. And on San Pedro twice I have nearly been hit broadside, at 28th and San Pedro.
“Mr. Towery, does the width of San Pedro have anything to do with the traffic problem you are talking about?
“Yes, it is not really a street. It is more of an alley, really; at least in size.”
One of the City’s own experts, civil engineer Mr. Ross Jacobs, described the Salado and San Pedro Streets as:
“Q. State in your opinion what is the character of the streets * * * of San Pedro Street.
“A. They are very narrow, winding, and of short direction.
“Q. Why is it, in your opinion, that they are classified as residential streets ?
“A. Mainly because they don’t go very far. They are very short streets.
They have numerous jobs and dead-ends, and there is no way that through traffic can actually move through the area.”
A Second Height and Area classification had been denied to the previous owner of the subject property, E. M. Choate, Jr.
In May, 1960, Choate applied for change of the same tract’s Height and Area Classification from First to Second. This was opposed by the neighbors. The Planning Commission recommended that the change be denied. In June, 1960, the City Council unanimously denied the application. After this denial, Choate withdrew his earlier (1957) application for a change of the tract from “A” to “B” Residence District, without change of Height and Area Classification which had been recommended by the Planning Commission. This application had been pending before the City Council from 1957 until its withdrawal in August, 1960, without any final action being taken on it by the Council.
Shortly before the passage of the ordinance in question, the City Council made a significant comprehensive area zoning change within two blocks of the Choate tract. On December 13, 1962, it rezoned the thirteen blocks immediately north of 29th Street. This zoning change was from “A” Residence to “BB” District which permits multiple apartment units. The creation of this district by the City Council was recommended by the Planning Commission. This district contains approximately 300 lots.
Prior to its recommendation, the Planning Commission, upon being referred an application for such a change by an individual covering several lots, instituted a study of the entire area. This study included consideration of street widths, number of people living in the area, estimates of the future population expected in Austin, and consideration of present use of the area. One of the factors of the Commission’s recommendation was that creation of this thirteen block “BB” District would provide a large *680area for future multiple apartment development.
This carefully studied and comprehensive zoning amendment was duly enacted by the City Council only six days before the filing of the application for the zoning change here in dispute. On December 19, 1962, an application to change the zoning of subject three lots from “A” Residence, First Height and Area, to “B” Residence, Second Height and Area, was filed.
The lots in suit consist of two vacant lots and one lot with a duplex on it. These lots had been owned for a number of years prior to the application by E. M. Choate, Jr. who signed the December 19, 1962, application.
The Choate application was duly referred to the Zoning Committee of the Planning Commission. Pursuant to the requirements of Article 1011c, V.A.C.S., all homeowners within 200 feet of the subject lots were notified of the hearing. A considerable number of the owners appeared in protest against the application. After a public hearing held on January 8, 1963, the Zoning Committee recommended against granting the application, stating to the Planning Commission:
“The Committee felt that the request should be denied as it would be a spot zone, and to grant it would create too high an increase in traffic. The streets could not handle any additional traffic.”
At their meeting on January IS, 1963, the Planning Commission of the City of Austin recommended that the City Council deny the Choate application. Their minutes pointed out:
“A majority of the Commission felt that the request should be denied as it would be a spot zone and to grant it would create too high an increase in traffic. The streets could not be widened and could not handle any additional traffic. Some members felt that this would be the proper use for the area, once the streets are made adequate.”
The Austin City Council voted on the Choate application on February 7, 1963. To override the Planning Commission recommendation of disapproval, an affirmative vote of at least four of the five members of the City Council was required by Section 31 (b) of Chapter 32 of the City Code. The Council overrode the Planning Commission and granted the application by a vote of four to one.
Soon after the Council vote in favor of the zoning change, on April 1, 1963, Henry Wire, then record title owner of the three lots, applied for a building permit which was granted. The permit is for the construction of a two-story, 36-unit apartment hotel. The zoning change allows Wire to raise this to a maximum of 41-units on subject lots. The “B” Residence, Second Height and Area zoning permits an apartment hotel in which may be located a cafe, drug store, clothes pressing shop, and barber shop. The apartment house will accommodate 72 boys who are undergraduates at the University of Texas and will not have the supervision required by the University for “approved” housing. Wire testified that he did not intend to comply with the University requirements for approved housing.
To operate “approved” housing increases the overhead operational expense in that the owner is required to have a “house mother” on duty and graduate student supervisors. Wire admitted that he did not intend to incur this expense.
The City’s survey of car ownership of apartment dwellers shows that one and one half cars per unit, or 54 cars, will be based at the apartment house. In addition, there will be visiting or guest cars. While the location of this apartment hotel will hardly be noticeable in the traffic of the major thoroughfares of Austin, it will have a drastic effect on traffic in San Pedro and Salado Streets. The apartment hotel will generate a minimum of from 180 to 400 car movements per day and it could be many more. There are no sidewalks along San *681Pedro Street. The additional traffic generated will be hazardous to the children of the neighborhood. Children walking to school must walk in the street.
The construction of the apartment house would materially increase the likelihood of fire in the area.
Further parking on San Pedro Street would block its use for fire-fighting equipment and greatly handicap fire-fighting in the area. The Austin Fire Chief, R. H. Dickerson, testified:
“Q. As an expert in this matter, Chief, would you say that for San Pedro Street, assuming a twenty-five foot pavement, as you saw it there, to have a traffic condition that would bring about a parking on both sides of the street, would that be a definite fire hazard in your judgment?
“A. Well, if you had parking on both sides of the street, a twenty-two foot street from curb to curb, if they were not parked perfectly up against the curb, and part of them thrown out as you usually find, it would definitely block our entrance into a street of that width, yes, sir.”
Also, the Fire Chief testified:
“Q. Now, if that house caught fire and this street was blocked by parked cars, would that be a major handicap in fighting a fire in Dr. Burford’s house ?
“A. Yes, sir. Traffic congestion wherever we go is a hazard to our efficiency. If we can’t get through, we can’t lay our lines; if we caij’t; we can’t.
“Q. If you had this street blocked to your equipment by parked cars, would you be able to fight that fire?
“A. Well, there again, it would be like a house built on a hill with no entrance to it. You’d have to put a hose down as close to it as you could, and wherever it was blocked, puli'it up the street to the fire, and that’s a delay.
“Q. And the house might burn down in the meantime ?
“A. It’s according to how far advance it is. It isn’t going to help conditions any.”
Considerable noise will be generated by the imposition of seventy two unsupervised male undergraduates upon the neighborhood.
The City has not acquired the additional right of way necessary to widen either San Pedro or all of Salado Street in the area and has no plan to do anything about it. Although Wire donated a ten-foot strip on Salado, an additional strip must be acquired from the Owsley property next to Wire to the south. This has not been done. If this ten-foot strip is taken for Salado Street, the large trees in front of the property must be cut down. Henry Wire does not plan to make any effort to get San Pedro Street widened.
Yet to widen the right of way of San Pedro would destroy the front yards of several homes, and to widen either San Pedro or Salado would require cutting of many of the stately pecan and elm trees which have been there more than 40 years.
The City Council refused a request that action on the ordinance be withheld until proposed traffic and zoning studies of the area were made.
The City of Austin Master Plan, adopted in 1961, designates the section of the City in which subject property is located as High Density Residential. This designation calls for an average of fifteen dwelling units per acre over an extensive area. The zoning change given to the Wire property allows over twice the number of units per acre provided in the Master Plan.
In general, putting an apartment hotel in this location will completely change the character of the neighborhood.
*682Austin has approximately 1,000 acres within its city limits which were already zoned for multi-unit apartment use. Of this 1,000 acres, only about 330 acres is presently being used for multi-unit apartments. Thus only one third of the presently zoned apartment area is being devoted to such use at the present time. The recently zoned thirteen block area, a large and as yet undeveloped district for multi-unit apartments located right north of 29th Street, is available for this type of development — as well as a large area (already zoned for apartment hotels but as yet undeveloped) of land lying between this neighborhood and the University.
The view of the Zoning Committee of the Planning Commission and of the Planning Commission of the City of Austin that ordinance in suit constitutes spot zoning is supported by eminent authorities.
Yoldey, Zoning Law and Practice, 2nd Ed., defines “spot zoning” as follows:
“Cases become ‘spot zoning’ where obviously a particularly small lot or parcel of ground is singled out and placed in an area, the use of which is unconsistent with the small lot or area so placed and whose classification is changed in the ordinance, and in these cases where special benefits are sought to be conferred on a particular property owner, or special burdens are sought to be imposed upon particular property owners.”
In 101 C.J.S. Zoning § 34. this definition is given:
“Spot zoning is an attempt to wrench a single lot from its environment and give it a new rating- that disturbs the tenor of the neighborhood, and which effects only the use of a particular piece of property or a small group of adjoining properties and is not related to the general plan for the community as a whole, but is primarily for the private interest of the owner of-the property so zoned; and it is the very antithesis of planned zoning.”
Yokley, in referring to “spot zoning” calls it, “ * * * a most vicious practice that has expanded almost to a point where it has become a cancerous growth on the body politic in many, many municipalities of the land. * * * ”
In my opinion, this case is controlled by the decision in Weaver v. Ham, 149 Tex. 309, 232 S.W.2d 704. In that case the Court condemned as “spot zoning” an amending ordinance which created a Zone D (apartment house) island in the center of a Zone A (residential) district.1 In the course of its opinion the Court held:
“The power to vary conditions of zoning ordinances should be sparingly exercised, and such power should be exercised only for the benefit of the public and with due regard for the preservation of the rights of others acquired under original zoning ordinances.”
The Court also quoted approvingly this excerpt from the opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, 47 S.Ct. 114, 71 L.Ed. 303, 54 A.L.R. 1016, as follows :
“ * * * ‘With particular reference to apartment houses, it is pointed out that the development of detached house sections is greatly retarded by the coming of apartment houses, which has sometimes resulted in destroying the entire section for private house purposes; that in such sections very often the apartment house is a mere parasite, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings created by the residential character of the district. Moreover, the coming of one apartment house is followed by others, interfering by their height and bulk with the free circula*683tion of air and monopolizing tlie rays of the sun which otherwise would fall upon the smaller homes, and bringing, as their necessary accompaniments, the disturbing noises incident to increased traffic and business, and the occupation, by means of moving and parked automobiles, of larger portions of the streets, thus detracting from their safety and depriving children of the privilege of quiet and open spaces for play, enjoyed by those in more favored localities, — until, finally, the residential character of the neighborhood and its desirability as a place of detached residences are utterly destroyed. .Under these circumstances, apartment houses, which in a different environment would be not only entirely unobj ectionable but highly desirable, come very near to being nuisances.’ ”
I insert below a photograph of a scene on Salado Street a short distance from the Wire apartment project.

The exercise of little imagination is required to envision the change upon this peaceful, beautiful and dignified neighborhood which will be wrought by the advent of seventy two unchaperoned University boys, their friends and carriages.
I would strike down the ordinance in' suit and brand it a horrible example of discriminatory legislation,

. The “island” in the Ham ease contained 220,000 square feet. The “island” in this case is only 32,000 square feet, or about y7th the size of the Ham island.