Lubbock’s Planning and Zoning Commission is set to consider a zone change for property under an industrial asphalt batch plant that started operating earlier this year, less than 600 feet from residential neighborhoods.
The plant is located on property zoned for single-family residential, just south of Erskine Street, on the other side of Northeast Loop 289 from Lubbock’s historic Parkway Cherry Point neighborhood.
Sandra Chatham is with the neighborhood association, and she said “dust and cement” blowing across the neighborhood has been a problem for residents.
“This neighborhood is for single-family homes,” Chatham said. “We're building homes, Habitat [for Humanity] is right behind, and we have people in this neighborhood that've been in this neighborhood 40, 50 years.”
Residents like 99-year-old Rose Wilson, who seemed equally concerned about the children on her street.
“One lady on the corner there, she just had a new baby. I said, keep that baby in that house. We don't want nothing to happen to her, but it's sad,” Wilson said. “When that wind is blowing, that sand, it just covers everything.”
Wilson is an icon for many in the Lubbock community. Elected as the first Black female president of Lubbock’s NAACP in the 1970s, she served for 30 years; she received the Governor’s Volunteer Award in 2023, and the state NAACP recognized her West Texas leadership at its convention earlier this year.
Rooted in racial discrimination and redlining that started in the city over a century ago, citizens of North and East Lubbock have dealt with the side effects of growing up in neighborhoods next to industrial-zoned properties, and many like Wilson continue to push against it.
Complaints by groups like the NAACP and the North and East Lubbock Coalition have mounted over recent years, and that opposition was ready at the influx of large-scale data centers in West Texas. When a 936-acre data center was proposed to be built by Northeast Loop 289 in January, the North and East Lubbock Coalition spoke against it, Planning and Zoning commissioners rejected the proposal, and the project eventually withdrew.
On a rainy afternoon in October, Wilson and members of the Parkway Cherry Point neighborhood gathered to bring attention to the piles of dust and sand at the industrial asphalt batch plant just across the road from their homes.
“Thank you all for coming on out in this weather to help us carry on this program, because we're gonna need all the help we can get,” Wilson said. “All the help we can get, 'cause they ain't going away until we fight 'em.”
Sandra Chatham said when the plant went up nearby, Parkway residents thought it would be temporary.
“It's been here as a temporary thing for a couple of months, that was going to be temporary,” Chatham said. “They didn't get permission from us to come out and do it. What we want them to do is take a look at it and move it out of our neighborhood.”
Construction engineering company Webber LLC applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality seeking an air quality standard permit for the asphalt plant in April. According to the application, the plant will produce 1,310,400 tons of asphalt mix per year, “with a maximum operating schedule of 12 hours per day, 7 days per week, 52 weeks per year, or 4,368 total hours.”
The application also stated the facility will be located “at least 200 feet from the closest property line.” But according to the City of Lubbock’s zoning code standards for specific use, batch plants are required to be located “a minimum of 600 feet from any civic and Institutional use or a residentially used or zoned property,” with hours limited for those within 1,000 feet of residential properties.
Adam Pirtle is an attorney with Legal Aid of Northwest Texas, representing the Parkway Cherry Point Neighborhood in their complaint about the facility.
“Temporary batch plants are allowed to be in more areas,” Pirtle said. “They still have to be more than 600 feet from residentially zoned land or residential homes.”
While temporary batch plants have more leeway in the zoning code, developers are hoping to make the establishment more permanent with a specific use distinction from the Planning and Zoning Commission.
According to the notice of public hearing, the request from landowners Frontier Land & Cattle LLC is asking for 72 acres of low-density single-family district zoning to be changed to light industrial, with a specific use permit for a permanent batch plant on the property.
“Once you change that land to light industrial, imagine dominoes starting to fall,” Pirtle said. “This is a residentially zoned area, but as we know, the city of Lubbock continues to concentrate industrial zoning on the east and the north side of Lubbock.”
The City of Lubbock’s Code Enforcement issued a land use violation against the facility on Sept. 1, citing “permitted uses.”
“The city, in their zoning violation, set a compliance date of December 7, 2026, essentially allowing the facility to operate for three months in violation of the zoning codes,” Pirtle said. “So we definitely had a problem with that.”
The Planning and Zoning Commission is scheduled to take public comments on the facility’s zone change request in the hearing set for Thursday, Nov. 5 at 6 p.m., at Citizens Tower at 1314 Avenue K.