A wedge of land along a major highway intersection is at the center of a fight between residents of a suburban neighborhood and a large truck dealer that owns the property.
On Tuesday, zoning commissioners sided with dozens of Paloma residents and an apartment developer who asked the city to deny a rezoning request by Doggett Freightliner that would have allowed for a big rig dealership adjacent to the neighborhood.
Their motion to deny the rezoning of 34 acres in Northeast San Antonio came only after more than an hour of residents and attorneys speaking in opposition, Doggett’s representatives making their case and multiple questions and discussion by commissioners.
An effort to postpone the vote and give the neighbors and landowner more time to work out their differences failed, with six commissioners to four voting against the continuance. Zoning Commission Chair Robert Sipes said the additional two weeks would not change his opinion on the case.
Later, nine of 10 commissioners voted in favor of recommending a denial.
“I find this, like many of our cases, to be very difficult,” Commissioner John Bustamante said.
Conditions in the area create a conflict between two basic zoning principles, he said: That commercial zoning is appropriate along a major highway — where much of that type of use already exists — and that industrial uses are not ideal near a residential development.
Paloma is a neighborhood of 1,344 single-family homes built in the southeast quadrant of Interstate 10 and Loop 1604 East. Besides two fast food restaurants closest to the intersection, parcels of undeveloped, brushy land buffered the one- and two-story houses from the highway.
Doggett acquired two of those parcels in 2017 and 2023. Its site plan for the larger of the two properties shows a T-shaped building surrounded by hundreds of parking spaces for rigs and other vehicles and a detention pond.
When it submitted the site plan to the city to request changes in the land use and zoning for a truck repair and sales dealership several months ago, neighbors organized for the first time.
Unhappy with the dealership being built across the street from a new 264-unit community under construction, multi-family developer RightQuest Residential joined them in April by footing the cost for a public relations firm, a slick website and legal counsel.
“Not only are we part of the community, we have alignment of interest in protecting our investment,” said Ryan Harden, a developer with RightQuest Residential, which started construction on the luxury apartment complex in 2022. It is currently about 85% complete with about a dozen tenants living there.
“We assumed that that zoning and that overlay would be upheld by the city,” Harden said. “We made our investment decision based on the fact that it was there, and since then we’ve put tens of millions of dollars into the development, as have three of the largest home builders in America.”
Despite those concerns, in May, the Planning Commission voted in favor of changing the zoning overlay for the area from urban living overlay to commercial overlay. A zoning overlay district superimposes added regulations over an existing zoning district.
Planning commissioners also voted to recommend the City of San Antonio annex 16 acres of the property that was in the city’s extra-territorial jurisdiction where Doggett plans to build the dealership.
But Tuesday’s ruling by the Zoning Commission puts the trucking company’s next move in question.
Property values
When Jo Most bought her new house and moved to Paloma from the Rim, she looked forward to living closer to her son and having her grandchildren over to play in the subdivision’s park.
Like many of her neighbors, especially those who would share a fence with the dealership, the thought of big rigs in the neighborhood’s backyard raised health and safety concerns.
They worried about increased traffic, unsightly views, odors, noise and a potential drop in residential property values, especially if it attracted other automotive or industrial developments.
Jo Most had expected townhomes or condominiums to be built on the adjacent farmland, she said. Neighbors had hoped the C-2 zoning would attract retail or restaurants that would be useful in the area.
Paloma resident Corey Thomas also suggested that a car wash would be better than what Doggett had planned. “This is not going to make it inviting for our community that’s already out here on an island by ourselves,” he said.
But another resident, the only one who told commissioners he supports the project, pointed out there’s already a truck driver training and oil change business near the neighborhood. “I haven’t heard any complaints about that,” Joseph Hudson said of the .15-acre property.
Industrial corridor
An attorney representing Doggett said the company has met with residents twice to present the site plans and listen to their concerns. As a result, Doggett agreed to build an 8-foot-high masonry fence and retain a natural tree line between its dealership and the homes it abuts.
The company also assured the neighbors that no freightliners would use Weichold Road near the neighborhood, that downward-facing lighting would be used, and it would limit operating hours to Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed on Sundays.
There would be no loudspeakers used at the dealership and no fuel is stored on the site, the company said.
“We don’t have a building within 200 feet of anybody’s property line,” attorney Ken Brown said. Under commercial zoning rules, there’s no such assurance that another commercial developer would provide that kind of distance buffer, he said.
Doggett chose the site along a corridor already populated by large truck sales and repair businesses, including Rush Truck Centers. Several single-family neighborhoods are situated adjacent to trucking and transport companies in the northwest quadrant of the intersection.
“Like it or not, if you out there, this is a heavily commercial/industrial corridor with a lot of these uses — truck stops, truck blocking facilities, fuelers, truck repairs,” Brown said.
While homeowners point to another Doggett site in San Antonio they say looks like a junkyard as what’s to come, Brown said the company is committed to building a dealership more like one it operates in Houston, which also happens to share a fence line with single-family homes. (The City of Houston does not have zoning laws and City codes do not address land use.)
“There’s going to be a Doggett dealership on one of those tracts in the very near future,” Brown told the Report. And the 34-acre site is better given that the company is working to resolve the zoning and annexation issues and the larger site allows for better orientation of the building, setbacks and entrance and exits on the property, he said.
Doggett also owns 24 acres closer to Loop 1604 that Paloma residents said would be a better option for the neighborhood, because it is not directly adjacent. So far, the company has not pursued it.
Commissioner Sipes said he could not support the rezoning because it would conflict with the Far East Community Plan of the SA Tomorrow plan, which calls for a diversity of land uses in the area so that industrial uses — freight, transport, manufacture, construction — do not dominate the corridor.
Sipes also pointed out that the Planning Commission approved a community commercial (C-2) zoning which allows retail and professional services, not C-3 which supports industrial use.
At the applicant’s request, City Council won’t consider the commission’s recommendation until at least August.
