Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum

willyk wrote:There is enough happening along eastern Ross Ave to justify a thread. The development along Henderson, Fitzugh and Bennet is finally reaching Ross. The DISD properties are being sold. The Icon and Olympus are done and the Modera is well underway.

So here Is my question-- three retail projects are underway near Ross and Hall. Two are on the north side of Ross across the street from Little Woodrow's. Another is at the corner of Hall and 75 immediately north of the Kroger site. Does anyone know what is being developed at these sites?

300 apartments planned for Ross at Annex

The East Dallas development boom is creeping toward Downtown with plans for a 300-unit apartment complex off Ross at Annex.

Austin-based Cypress Real Estate Advisors Inc. asked for a zoning change that would bring the entire 1.7-acre property into the same zone.

Cypress, the developer that’s taken over the Lake Highlands Town Center, wants to build a four-story apartment complex surrounding a parking garage. JHP is the architect, although no drawings are available yet.

jrd1964 wrote:On Ross just east of the Burger King and Waffle House, a new Raising Cane's is going up. Not sure when it will be ready/open; they have plywood and studs up now.

Tivo_Kenevil wrote:

jrd1964 wrote:On Ross just east of the Burger King and Waffle House, a new Raising Cane's is going up. Not sure when it will be ready/open; they have plywood and studs up now.

I saw that too. It will be years before Ross is a great pedestrian cooridor..If ever. The city seems to be okay with allowing fast food drive thru establishments all up and down Ross.

At least rasing canes is decent. They need better condiments though. Not a single hot sauce packet in that joint.

ArtVandelay wrote:

Tivo_Kenevil wrote:

jrd1964 wrote:On Ross just east of the Burger King and Waffle House, a new Raising Cane's is going up. Not sure when it will be ready/open; they have plywood and studs up now.

I saw that too. It will be years before Ross is a great pedestrian cooridor..If ever. The city seems to be okay with allowing fast food drive thru establishments all up and down Ross.

At least rasing canes is decent. They need better condiments though. Not a single hot sauce packet in that joint.

Why doesn't the city require each new development to install pedestrian friendly infrastructure fronting Ross Ave? Seems like a no brainer. All in-fills should have new wide sidewalks, streetlights, landscaping treatments and benches/trash receptacles. Then the city can come in after the development cycle and fill in the rest.

tamtagon wrote:I do not understand why San Jacinto still has this Ross Avenue override.

Leon Capital Group won a bid to purchase the school headquarters buildings at Ross and Washington avenues just east of downtown.

The San Jacinto properties received high bids from townhouse builder Intown Homes, which has multiple projects in Dallas. And builder Centre Living Homes was the top bidder for one of the Ross corners now occupied by two small buildings.

The busy thoroughfare on downtown’s near east side is getting a major makeover with hundreds of new apartments, townhouses, shops and restaurants.

“I say the Ross corridor is Uptown lite,” said real estate broker Mike Turner. “It’s the gateway to the Arts District and seeing big changes.”

Real estate brokers say that prices on choice properties along Ross now top $40 a foot.

“Land speculation is out of the game,” said broker Newt Walker. “The only people buying over there are developers or someone who has a direct use for the property.”

Walker said fractured ownership of properties in the area makes it hard for developers to put together large tracts.

Leviticus and Menthol Ross were direct descendants of our nation’s beloved flag-maker, Betsy Ross. Their grandson, Steve Ross, parlayed a New Jersey funeral home into the world’s biggest media and entertainment conglomerate -- Time Warner.

In 1903 the Ross brothers came to Dallas from France, where the family had been living as expatriates. They were trained as pharmacists. It was here, in a shabby shed at the back of the large Ross Family Estate on Poultry Row that the Ross brothers invented their famous cough drops.

joshua.dodd wrote:With the explosion of development along Ross Avenue, both in Downtown and East, I think it would be a good idea to build a trolley line along it. If not a trolley line, maybe in the future a subway that runs parallel with it.

joshua.dodd wrote:Excellent! I'm really impressed with that plan! It is excellently integrated. It's amazing how Downtown has transformed from a ghost town in the 90s to the life it has today, but this plan will truly bring life into Downtown.
How long do you suppose it will be until this is finally realized?

eburress wrote:

joshua.dodd wrote:Excellent! I'm really impressed with that plan! It is excellently integrated. It's amazing how Downtown has transformed from a ghost town in the 90s to the life it has today, but this plan will truly bring life into Downtown.
How long do you suppose it will be until this is finally realized?

100 years.

Just kidding. This wasn't an actual "plan" but more of a concept piece of what could be...an aspirational view of how Ross Ave could someday be if this or that happened. There aren't any actual plans for making these changes.

In a city that can't see a future in its past, developer will tear down Dallas ISD's 63-year-old HQ
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/04/17/city-see-future-past-developer-will-tear-dallas-isds-63-year-old-hq

...

Preservationists and city officials are rightfully saddened and outraged by the district's doings: The Dallas City Council's Philip Kingston, who reps that stretch of Ross, calls the pending razing "criminal" and wants at least the facade preserved "at the bare minimum."

"The elected officials on the DISD board who are supposed to be acting in the public interest are either ignorant or disrespectful of the need to preserve our architectural heritage," he said Monday. "It's flabbergasting."

But that's not the only reason he's furious: Kingston and DISD trustee Miguel Solis wrote in these very pages back in December that they'd hoped the district would sell the HQ, as well as other surplus properties, to a developer that would would bring affordable housing to Ross Avenue and elsewhere. They pitched a plan whereby the city and district would collaborate on requiring "neighborhood supportive retail and mixed-income housing likely to attract more families to areas they have historically been boxed out of."

That didn't happen. Instead the district sold off the properties piecemeal without ever talking to its alleged partner at 1500 Marilla about how it might be in everyone's best interest to adaptively reuse some of the structure and figure out how to bring back the very people the district seems hellbent on chasing off. So, in the end, we'll get what we keep getting: market-rate apartments full of transient tenants who don't have kids in the district and skin in the game.

...

cowboyeagle05 wrote:Well since everything new they have been building along Ross looks about as inviting as a trip to the dentist for a root canal I don't expect to be surprised. Sounds like we will get some of the same bland toast apartments.

cowboyeagle05 wrote:Well since everything new they have been building along Ross looks about as inviting as a trip to the dentist for a root canal I don't expect to be surprised. Sounds like we will get some of the same bland toast apartments.

CRE_Investor wrote:a rubber tire street car (not a bus, the route has to be fixed and permanent to truly spur development) run from Greenville Ave down to the arts district or even the west end. If you could combine that with functional sidewalks there would be tons of opportunities for quality development that would combine with Bryan Place, Henderson, and Greenville to make a really cool area in near east Dallas.

tanzoak wrote:

CRE_Investor wrote:a rubber tire street car (not a bus, the route has to be fixed and permanent to truly spur development) run from Greenville Ave down to the arts district or even the west end. If you could combine that with functional sidewalks there would be tons of opportunities for quality development that would combine with Bryan Place, Henderson, and Greenville to make a really cool area in near east Dallas.

Do you mean a trolleybus?


Slight tangent, but it's funny to me that streetcars are seen to help spur development due to their permanence, when one of the most notable historical aspects of them was that they all got torn out! I think they do help drive development, but mostly because rail can be seen as high-class (especially cute trolleys), while buses are seen as exclusively for poors.

CRE_Investor wrote:Yes something like that, but preferably not from the 1980s styling department. I only specified rubber tire because they are so much cheaper and easier to build than fixed rail.

CRE_Investor wrote:

tanzoak wrote:

CRE_Investor wrote:a rubber tire street car (not a bus, the route has to be fixed and permanent to truly spur development) run from Greenville Ave down to the arts district or even the west end. If you could combine that with functional sidewalks there would be tons of opportunities for quality development that would combine with Bryan Place, Henderson, and Greenville to make a really cool area in near east Dallas.

Do you mean a trolleybus?


Slight tangent, but it's funny to me that streetcars are seen to help spur development due to their permanence, when one of the most notable historical aspects of them was that they all got torn out! I think they do help drive development, but mostly because rail can be seen as high-class (especially cute trolleys), while buses are seen as exclusively for poors.

Yes something like that, but preferably not from the 1980s styling department. I only specified rubber tire because they are so much cheaper and easier to build than fixed rail. You're right that, fair or not, in sunbelt cities buses are viewed as "lower class" which is one of the reasons I don't think the D-link will ever be successful. How often have you heard someone in Dallas say "lets catch the bus" versus "let's hop on the trolley" to go to dinner or grab drinks."

willyk wrote:

cowboyeagle05 wrote:Well since everything new they have been building along Ross looks about as inviting as a trip to the dentist for a root canal I don't expect to be surprised. Sounds like we will get some of the same bland toast apartments.

Uptown started out the exact same way. It's not reasonable to expect investors to support a 20 story tower in a neighborhood with no amenities and no record of capital appreciation.

If this 4-5 story stuff works, there is a chance that the towers will follow. But there is enough land in East Dallas to support this type of development for a long while, so I have doubts.

I am ok with these projects. I am looking forward to seeing them turn the Ross/75/Fitzhugh triangle into one coherent neighborhood.

After a somewhat tumultuous tenure, Little Woodrow's, the Houston import, is closing its branch in Dallas. Owner Danny Evans confirmed that the closure would be effective immediately.

The bar opened in September 2016 in a renovated vintage building on Ross Avenue with craft beer, a killer patio, and a good reputation from Houston. But the bar's fortunes were undermined by a couple of unfortunate incidents, as well as a Ross Avenue not yet fully developed.

cowboyeagle05 wrote:It is also possible they were run badly. You see it all the time ownership and/or management blames a neighborhood for their failure to find their customer. Many bar/restaurants commonly do this when they fail. There are very few news articles where the ownership/management says yeah we didn't really know what we were doing but we hoped a logo and selling drinks would grab customers for us. What marketing did they do beyond the bad PR they got for the tattoo fiasco. Did they spend enough on marketing?

gshelton91 wrote:... ordered chips and Salsa got Pace