Rowlett: Crystal Lagoon

[The_Overdog]

I never really understood the attitude of the city government and politically powerful residents towards the lakefront. Basically, they wanted it to be 100% privately controlled

That's how the majority of the lakes in Texas are. It's funny studies have been done about water access. Basically, if the front is privately owned, then the property adjacent is worth quite a bit. Lake view property (across the street) sells at a premium. Non-lake view but nearby is of no added value vs no lake nearby at all. The drop off is that severe.


Comparatively if the lake front is publicly accessible the value is spread over about 3 miles, and land near a lake (say within 1 mile) but no lake view still sells at a premium. To put it another way, city government and politically powerful take all the value and leave the rest on the table to be wasted.

[zaphod]

Outing myself as a current Fort Worth resident, I'm glad we have Eagle Mountain Reservoir. It's TRWD, and long ago before anyone wanted to live out there a lot of park land was dedicated. It has a robust man made beach with a large >200 car parking lot and then at least half of the shoreline is preserved. Azle and other areas also have parks. Benbrook Lake also has sizeable park frontage and Fort Worth is really making open space acquistion a priority.

Maybe it's a east versus west phenomena. The east texas lakes are shallower and wider and have more fingers, and they were built by municipal water authorities on top of fractured small plots of land. So there was no way to easily acquire a lot of lakefront for public use, and the private sector built a lot of nasty trailer park style lakefront living developments.

West of Fort Worth, the lakes are deeper, smaller, and older. They were built by the Army Corps of Engineers or planned. They were built on top of giant ranches with singular ownership. It was easier for authorities to acquire land around them and harder to subdivide land with no utilities and no roads.