Property owner says he followed the city’s rules, while neighbors insist he’s "ruined" the land.
Property owner says he followed the city’s rules, while neighbors insist he’s "ruined" the land.
Posted: August 12, 2026, By ROBERT WILONSKY, Columnist
(Above) A lone truck rolled across the barren Canyon Drive property on Aug. 4. / Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
“They’ve taken the bluff out of Bluffview.”
I’ve heard that phrase a lot in recent days. At a press conference in a church. At a plan commission meeting at City Hall. In the homes of angry neighbors. Expect a Bullzerk T-shirt soon.
And it doesn’t look like they’re wrong. Drive to the intersection of Canyon Drive and Watauga Road, off Midway Road, into the neighborhood so named for the farm and dairy once sprawled across this undulating stretch of northwest Dallas. There you’ll find more than 2 acres of land, that bluff, screened off by a locked construction fence.
The hill here used to be higher. By 4, 7, 10, 14 feet. Depends on who you ask, what photos you see, what slope you’re shown. There were more trees, too, so many that passersby couldn’t even peek into the property just a few months ago. But that was before neighbors say some 200 dump trucks came through in March, carting off the top of the bluff now scraped down to the Austin Chalk. Before more than 100 trees were ripped out and thrown away.
In the 1970s, architect Parker Folse and his wife, Lois, hosted parties on the hill, and rented the house to Larry Hagman, Paul McCartney, Rock Hudson, Burt Reynolds and other celebrities without anyone knowing they were there, in the funky house tucked in the trees. Now, the stars have been replaced by a moonscape.
“They’ve ruined it,” 86-year-old Nancy Kenty told me last week, sitting in the dining room of the Canyon Road house in which her 87-year-old husband, Sterling, an architect and builder, was raised. Kenty had an old property map on the table, a keepsake from when she helped create the Bluffview Special Purpose District in 1996 to preserve “country living in the city,” she told the Preston Hollow Advocate years later.
(Left) Nancy Kenty keeps an old map of Bluffview showing who used to own the land in this rolling stretch of northwest Dallas. / Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
Now, she looks at that bluff up the street, hailed by its most recent realtor for its “rolling topography and mature trees,” and just shakes her head.
“It has ruined our neighborhood,” she said again. Across the table sat Steve Byars, who’d brought me to Kenty’s house.
“It’s a horror,” he said. “That’s what I call it.”
I’d heard Byars earlier that morning at the Northaven United Methodist Church, where he was one of several speakers announcing the creation of D13 Together, a coalition of northwest Dallas residents protesting the towering redevelopment of Preston Royal, proposed patio homes at Marsh and Walnut Hill lanes and other zoning cases. Byars and other Bluffview residents came to air grievances about the Canyon Drive redo, which they say has resulted in dust storms, flash flooding from stormwater runoff and the destruction of a valuable piece of their beloved neighborhood; and to complain that their council member, Gay Donnell Willis, hasn’t done enough to help.
Two weeks earlier, on July 23, they’d pleaded their case to the plan commission, as the land owner sought adjustment of the property line on the 2.14-acre property that’s actually two distinct addresses with two separate entrances. The neighbors were joined by land-use consultant and Dallas Morning News contributor Dallas Cothrum, who’d been hired to oppose the request. Cothrum gave a lengthy presentation titled “Forgiveness First, Permission Second.”
“They clearcut the site without any grading plan,” Cothrum told me later. “This is especially egregious.” Cothrum — whose appearance surprised fellow zoning consultant Rob Baldwin, there to represent the Canyon property owner — said he spoke in opposition because “this is an organized group of sensible, nice people, and the city failed them.”
(Left) Steve Byars spoke on Aug. 4 at the D13 Together press conference announcing a coalition of northwest Dallas residents displeased by changes to their neighborhoods. / Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
The plan commission’s members tsk-tsked the unbluffening. Larry Hall, Willis’ appointee, said he was “blindsided.” CPC chair Brent Rubin, the mayor’s appointee, said, “There are things that were brought up today that sound like they could be very valid concerns on the part of the neighbors.” But after a brief recess to confer with city attorneys, Rubin said CPC was bound by state law to approve the property line request.
A week later, more than two dozen Canyon and Watauga residents emailed Willis to demand a criminal investigation for “clear evidence of intentional non-compliance and blatant environmental destruction.” Willis told me several city departments are investigating whether permits were pulled and regulations followed.
On Monday I ran all of this by the property owner, Nikhil Chaudhri, who said that “given all the outreach from the neighbors and the city, the contractor is being very careful, dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s. Candidly, it’s putting us through the ringer, but we’re happily working though it with the city. … This is a special property. I am excited about it. This has dampened the mood a bit, but I am not trying to do anything bad. I am not this [expletive] who wants to take out the trees and kill the birds.”
On the surface, this might look like just a neighborly dust-up in a well-off part of town, where the Canyon property was offered in 2024 as a single 2.14-acre site for nearly $8 million. But I’ve told versions of this story for years. All over town.
About how easy it is to get around the rules meant to stop the thinning of Dallas’ tree canopy. About developers clearcutting trees in residential neighborhoods. About the ordinance meant to stop it. About hands slapped and penalties paid. About the city’s inability to enforce its own rules.
(Above) The entrance to the Canyon Drive property was shrouded by trees that were removed by dump trucks that began appearing in Bluffview in March. / Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
Chaudhri said his contractor, Harold Leidner Landscape Architects, filed the permits required for the manse he’ll eventually build there, including ones for tree mitigation and removal. The city’s development website lists those permits, submitted for two separate addresses, as still under “plan review.”
One city official, speaking on background, said it’s not clear Chaudhri needed them since his Canyon property has those two addresses. The city’s tree preservation ordinance, Article X, says that “lots smaller than two acres in size” with single-family uses don’t require the city’s OK.
I called arborist Steve Houser, the former chair of the Urban Forest Advisory Committee who helped rewrite Article X in 2018. As far as he’s concerned, “the reason the tree removal was illegal is because the lots were vacant.” Which is true: A previous owner razed the Folse house in 2021. “As a result, the tree ordinance does apply,” Houser said. “Mitigation will be required, and they could include a fine,” which would be paid to the city’s reforestation fund.
City attorneys haven’t responded to numerous inquiries. But Chaudhri, who said the property had become overgrown in recent years, said he’s going to replace those lost trees — “and then some” — with a landscaping plan he said will cost around $6-7 million. He provided renderings of trees and a retaining wall surrounding a house resembling a boutique hotel.
Willis said officials are also investigating whether the property owner needed excavation and grading permits, which were submitted and withdrawn earlier this year. “It involves a lot of different departments,” she said.
But Willis said she’s never dealt with something like this before, either.
(Above) Where once movie stars hid on this hilltop, today a moonscape is visible through the locked construction fence along Canyon Drive. / Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
On the one hand, she said, “If it was your home and you wanted to make changes, how much interference would you want your neighbors to have outside of what’s legal?” And a few minutes later, she said, “It’s still no less offensive to those who consider that a part of the character of their neighborhood.”
This property was sold with the promise of “unparalleled privacy.” Which Chaudhri, to his dismay, lost the moment those bulldozers and dump trucks showed up in March.
“It would be silly for someone to move to Bluffview with the intention of taking the bluff out of Bluffview,” he said Monday.
Welcome to the neighborhood?
Update at 9:25 a.m. Aug. 12: After publication, I was forwarded an email that the city's chief of community prosecution, Michelle Buendia, sent to Bluffview residents Tuesday, which confirms that after meetings with Code Compliance, Planning and Development and Dallas Water Utilities, the City Attorney's Office determined that the grading and tree removal were done without permits, resulting in a stop-work order. Buendia wrote that the property owner is "taking steps to obtain the appropriate permits" for the grading, and that a permit for the tree removal has been submitted and "is currently under review."
But rather than "opening a case to escalate enforcement," city attorneys will merely "continue to monitor the properties and coordinate with the appropriate city departments to ensure appropriate permitting and activities."
Editorial Columnist
Robert Wilonsky is Dallas Morning News editorial columnist.