Trinity Groves, the most exciting restaurant theme park in the world, sits across the street from a 7-acre concrete mixing plant. This is unacceptable. "Right now the plant spreads a lot of unneeded cement dust all over the area," explained Karl Zavitkovsky, the city's Office of Economic Development director, at a recent public meeting. “Dust and heavy truck traffic from the plant affected Trinity Groves and the nearby La Bajada neighborhood," added a Dallas Morning News editorial on the matter. "Existing buildings viewed as ‘eyesore’ and incompatible with redevelopment efforts in the area," says an economic development committee presentation about the plants. The economic development office is so serious about the move that they are asking the City Council to approve spending $2.5 million in bond money to make a deal with the concrete company to get it to move.
Luckily, the economic development committee has already picked out a new location for the new, much nicer plant, in an area called the Lone Star Industrial Park. "This would be beneficial to us for a lot of reasons," Zavitkovsky said at the meeting. "It cleans up the area," by which he means the Trinity Groves area. "It puts us in a position to redevelop that area and generate a lot of additional new investment." The exact address for the concrete plant's proposed new home is 2900 W. Commerce St. The new location is an eight-minute walk away from a residential street and just 0.7 of a mile from a church and a DISD middle school, the Thomas A. Edison Middle Learning Center.
Next to the middle school is a business called "Katie's Little Angels Learning Center."
Today, the 2900 block of West Commerce Street is occupied by Foods International of Dallas. A man who stepped outside of the building when he saw me taking pictures said he hadn't heard anything about a cement plant potentially coming in nearby.
The residential street that is just 0.4 of a mile away from the plant isn’t the only housing nearby. A little further away, across the street from the middle school, sits Kinbridge Crossing, a massive low-income housing complex run by the Dallas Housing Authority.
A similar debate about concrete plants erupted in Frisco last year, when 1,435 people signed a Change.org petition asking the Frisco City Council to move three concrete plants located in the suburb. One of the plants is operated by Argo, the same company running the plant next to Trinity Groves. "These plants are located less than a mile from multiple public schools including Isbell Elementary School and Vanderventer Junior High School," the petition says. "The plants are less than 2 miles from an additional 5 public schools including Curtsinger Elementary School, Taylor Elementary School, McSpedden Elementary School, Liberty High School and Centennial High School. They are also located within a mile or two of more than 1,500 homes, along with numerous churches, preschools, daycares and businesses."
IJS.