Residents have long complained about this Fort Worth truck lot. It may soon become homes

The Fort Worth City Council on Tuesday evening kick-started the process to replace a truck lot in the city’s southeast with single-family homes.

The proposal, supported unanimously by council members, was the latest city-driven and resident-inspired effort to reduce industrialization in Echo Heights and surrounding communities.

“I do think this is a step in the right direction to approve this,” said Echo Heights resident and environmental activist Letitia Wilbourn. “I hope the city learns from this and doesn’t do this to any other citizens in Fort Worth.”

Wilbourn and her peers in the Echo Heights and Stop Six Environmental Coalition have lobbied their representatives for years to rein in trucking they fault for polluting their neighborhoods’ air and damaging their streets.

The newly targeted property rubs against a row of homes on Tahoe Drive, Wilbourn’s among them. She and nearby residents have long raised concerns about the noise, heat, and fumes generated by the trucks next door. Persistent complaints yielded revisions to the city’s planned zoning classifications for several Echo Heights properties, including 4812 Parker Henderson Road.

“I couldn’t celebrate my daughter’s birthday in the area I pay property taxes for because of the companies and businesses in our area,” Mar’Tayshia James, one of Wilbourn’s neighbors, said of the stench in her backyard.

The truck lot took form in the early 2000s, paving over a grassy knoll. It shares Parker Henderson Road with a park, cattle-grazed ranches, mobile-home communities and the warehouses of its freight competitors.

The property’s proprietors, Texas-based Abram Expedited , did not respond to multiple requests for comment and did not show up at council Tuesday to protest the rezoning. Council member Jeanette Martinez, the representative who put forward the proposal, said her office contacted Abram representatives about the case but heard nothing back.

“Economic growth has to be balanced with the welfare of all citizens,” said Spencer Dickinson, a member of the Greater Fort Worth chapter of the Sierra Club, and environmental advocacy group. “All citizens of Fort Worth need and deserve clean and safe communities to raise their children.”

The bid to rezone 4812 Parker Henderson Road follows a months-long battle to block a 7-acre warehouse complex just a mile north in Village Creek. Last month, city council voted with little disagreement and plenty of enthusiasm to re-designate the industrial plot for residential use, despite legal threats from the property’s owners.

The zoning commission will take up the Parker Henderson case on July 10.