South Dallas Public Improvement District: How to Vote

Scottie Smith II has a petition drive underway, and he’s moving fast for a reason.

Smith, a community developer and real estate broker working the MLK corridor, is pushing to establish the Sunny South Dallas Public Improvement District, a self-funded mechanism that would layer an additional property tax assessment on top of standard rates to pay for security patrols, landscaping, street cleaning and related upgrades. The proposed boundaries run from Al Lipscomb Way south to Robert B. Cullum Boulevard, with Fair Park sitting squarely inside the district lines.

South Dallas isn’t a neighborhood that’s been ignoring the pressure. Development interest along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard has been building, and Smith says he’s got wind of projects that haven’t surfaced publicly yet.

“We’re at a really, really interesting point in South Dallas, and knowing the amount of development coming over here that I have wind of, coming up and down the MLK corridor, I’m afraid there’s not going to be a way for the community to benefit from that for real,” Smith told the Dallas Free Press. “We’ve seen it before where development came extremely quickly, and then people started getting displaced.”

Dallas knows what a PID can do. Deep Ellum, Uptown, Downtown, the Arts District and Redbird all operate under similar structures. It’s not charity, and it’s not a grant program. Property owners inside a district assess themselves and control what that money funds.

Under Smith’s proposal, the rate would be 15 cents per $100 of appraised value each year. A property assessed at $300,000 would contribute $450 annually. Smith projects the district would produce at least $9 million over 10 years. The proposed budget doesn’t spread the money evenly. Public safety gets 42 percent. Beautification draws 20 percent. Business retention and recruitment receives 7 percent, capital improvements another 7 percent.

Forest Forward, which operates out of 1921 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., would serve as the managing entity. Smith is building a steering committee to sit on top of the spending.

The City of Dallas Office of Economic Development has signed off on the petition plan. What Smith needs now is signatures and community backing sufficient to move the proposal to a Dallas City Council vote. He’s scheduled four information sessions across the coming weeks to get there.

The schedule runs like this: December 3 at 6 p.m. at the Forest Forward Offices, 1921 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.; December 10 at 6 p.m. at The Office of Tabitha Wheeler, 2111 S. 2nd Ave.; December 13 at 11 a.m. at the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center, 2922 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.; and December 17 at 6 p.m., back at the Recreation Center.

Smith’s credibility on this corridor isn’t borrowed. He co-chaired the South Dallas Fair Park Area planning process, and he’s been watching this neighborhood absorb outside interest long enough to know what it looks like when a community doesn’t have a structure ready to capture value before it moves elsewhere.

The PID model is old in Dallas. It’s been working in places like Deep Ellum since long before that neighborhood’s current iteration, and the concept of property owners collectively funding improvements through a formal district goes back well past 1921 as a civic tool in American cities. What’s different here is the geography. South Dallas has watched Downtown, Uptown and the Arts District attract investment while its own corridors stayed on the margin. Smith’s argument is that a PID won’t stop that, but it can at least make sure the neighborhood has $9 million and a framework when development does arrive. Whether enough property owners agree is what the next few weeks will settle.